


teen age riot

by ridtheblues



Series: a primer (for small, weird loves) [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Character Study, Derry (Stephen King), First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Reddie, Richie Tozier's Sexuality Crisis, The Clubhouse (IT), The Rituals Are Intricate, Tutoring, Underage Smoking, ben and richie be like pining noises, bill/bev is there for a SECOND, brief angst, coming of age indie bullshit, eddie is there i promise you he just takes awhile, hammock scene anyone? spare hammock scene?, he just doesn't like labels and that is Okay!, inspired so heavily by richard siken i'm not even trying to be subtle about it anymore, like as slowburn as a 3/3 can be im so sorry, like for one second and it isn't in depth but be careful!, mentions of Period Typical Racism, mentions of hypothetical bi!richie, mentions of period typical homophobia, mentions of queer bashing, queer!richie, richie's best friend is stanley uris and if you don't like that you can leave!, slowburn, teenage reddie warriors this is for you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-10 04:21:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 66,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21476398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ridtheblues/pseuds/ridtheblues
Summary: Richie figures that by the time he feels like telling Ben, it’s high time he tells the rest of his friends too. He doesn’t think they’ll have a problem with it, not necessarily, but life is full of ‘what ifs’, and the idea of being outcasted more than he already was by a group of people he loved the most pretty much scared him shitless.Which is why when Richie walks into calculus surprisingly early after lunch and nearly rams face first into one of the cutest boys he’s ever seen in his life, he’s pretty sure he’s fucked. Like, ultimately and eternally fucked.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: a primer (for small, weird loves) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1599874
Comments: 111
Kudos: 391





	1. chapter one

**Author's Note:**

> you guys. you guys. please sit for a second and let me tell you a brief story. i started writing this in august. August. it is now november and guess what? it isn't even done! this isn't even all i have written!!! this was supposed to be a oneshot, and if you have read anything else that i have written in the last few months - yes this is the oneshot i've been teasing. only now it isn't a oneshot, and it'll likely be 2-3 parts. i am too burnt out to make this a lengthy fic, so if this chapter feels long and the reddie scenes feel really rushed please do not fret - the next two chapters are all reddie centric. i already have half of ch2 written, which was actually just the few scenes of this up until i made the executive decision to not have a 40k work long oneshot. ANYWAY! this was started in august, off a six word prompt that just sort of spiraled into a Richie Tozier Character study on accident and i don't know how it happened but it did. and now i am here, begging you to remove chapter one from my cold dead hands and treat it gently because it is the longest thing i have ever written, and i just spent the last four hours revising this much so it flowed as cohesively as possible. also: title is from the song 'teen age riot' by sonic youth, which is like, a really good song. so go listen to it! okay, i think that's all i have to say, and if your skipping these notes expecting a bunch of reddie don't get mad at me because i warned you!!!! alright proceed with caution, thank you for reading this if you did, and ill see you at the end.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Names of places we've been together, names of people we'd been together. Named of endurance, names of devotion, street names and place names and all the names of our dark heaven crackling in their pan."  
\- Saying Your Names, Richard Siken

_here it comes,_

_I know it's someone I knew,_

_teen age riot in a public station,_

_gonna fight and tear it up_

_in a hypernation, for you_

_teen age riot / sonic youth_

_\--------------------------_

_Fall, 1987_

Richie Tozier is eleven years old when he realizes he isn’t quite like his two best friends. He had been five years old when he'd met them, fresh faced and young and made up of the same exuberant energy that encompassed him, as unrelenting and overwhelming as it still is to this day. They’d met on the first day of kindergarten, gotten along because they each respectively had no one to sit with at lunchtime. It’s kind of a shitty way to make friends, Richie thinks in retrospect, but it had worked. Quickly, too, and Richie wonders if maybe it was too easy - how things fell into place. He’d never been able to make friends that easily before, and definitely not as easily after. Then again, that might just be how things were when you were a kid. Life hadn’t taken its toll, or whatever. Shitty experiences shaping you into someone who didn’t approach easy. Or someone who wasn’t easily approachable. Maybe that isn’t the case at all - maybe some people you’re just _ meant _to know, and the ones you don’t know won't matter in the long run anyway. Won't have any effect in shaping you into the person you become - if you ever finish becoming anyone at all. 

Regardless, it had been quick and painless - ripping off a bandaid or jumping off a cliff into a waveless body of water - to become best friends with Stanley Uris and Bill Denbrough, and it had taken an utmost of three days for them to be inseparable. Chats at lunch and in between classes spilling over into sleepovers and doing homework at each others houses, alternating between the three every single afternoon. Richie had decided then, with maybe too much clarity and certainty for a five year old hunched over his Learn The Alphabet packet, that they would be his friends forever. 

The three of them gather at Bill’s house every friday evening, playing board games and watching made-for-TV movies late into the night as the tape Richie’s father made plays softly in the background. Filled to the brim with The Beatles, Deep Purple, Fleetwood Mac. Acoustic guitars and soft melodies and stories none of them can relate to, not yet anyway. The music stays on no matter what, louder when they play CandyLand and even louder when they dance around each other in the living room, and barely there while they sit glued to the television. Background noise, a focal point, something to relate to a moment, or a soundtrack for memories. Never up too high, because Mrs. Denbrough, (Mrs. D, to Richie) absolutely despised rock n’ roll. Richie thought that she must have been mad, but he wouldn’t dare tell her that. Only because he’s got a certain fear of Adults. He sees the world adults in his head like that; Adults, with a capital A. Maybe fear isn’t the right word - Richie isn’t afraid of them, not really. They’re just different, hard to relate to and even harder to understand. Richie is coming to realize anything different makes him a little uncomfortable.

So, and you must understand, it _ scares _ him, makes him a _ little _ uncomfortable when after the first day of their sixth grade year, Bill and Stan start talking about _ Girls. _ (He sees Girls the same way he sees Adults, capital first consonant and all.) Richie thinks he understands Girls even less than he understands Adults. Richie sits in silence, a rarity for him, as Bill and Stan converse about the girls they had seen that day, the ones worthy enough to talk about and think about long after they had passed by. Bill talks admiringly of the soft-spoken girl from his math class, all lengthy brown hair and ripped denim, and Stan tangents while talking about her friend, the one dressed in white and sunflowers with piercing green eyes. Richie feels, for the first time but not the last, out of the loop. He searches his mind, desperately, for a girl he remembers seeing worthy enough to bring up and returns empty handed. The only thing close enough was his english teacher, Miss Stevenson, but that felt too much like a joke and Richie felt like anything but the comedic relief. So instead he stays silent, mostly, listening intently to the talking points and tucking them into the back of his brain in case he needs them again. If there was only one thing he could gather from this conversation, it's that you _ can’t _like a girl your friends like. He sees this by the way Stan and Bill alternate names and faces, never agreeing on one specific feature or person, not really at least. He lets them talk, nodding and smiling when he feels like he should and throwing out crude jokes he doesn’t totally understand. 

Unfortunately, the fact that liking a girl your friend likes and how that went against some sort of Unspoken Rulebook no one had given him wasn’t the only thing he’d gathered. Richie Tozier was no longer an exact copy of his two best friends, because Richie Tozier did not have crushes. Stanley changes the subject about halfway into his silent mental breakthrough, and Richie finds himself too occupied to stop him, even if he would’ve let him gladly had he been paying attention. The thought eventually buries itself into the back of his brain, next to his list of talking points and the jingle from this morning’s episode of Bozo the Clown, but he finds it makes its way to the forefront in the worst possible times. The crushes part, not the jingle. Although he can’t say that doesn’t come up either. 

Sometimes it's as soon as he gets to school, maybe his seat got changed and he has to sit next to a girl or he’s paired with one in P.E, and it creeps on him like hot-flushed embarrassment. It taunts him, calls him out for the way he thinks or acts or feels towards them, or the complete lack thereof. But by the time he gets home or over to Bill or Stan’s respective houses, all he thinks about is his homework and what they’re going to do tomorrow. Any thoughts of Girls or Crushes leave his head like a song he heard in passing, first the specifics, then the melody, then the whole goddamn thing. 

So when the thoughts do come back, Richie builds himself a defense mechanism of sorts. He finds he has to, because when one of the most asked questions in a prepubescent boys life is; “_And whose your crush, Richie?” _ and you don’t _ have _ one, people place you in one of two boxes. Either your crush is on a girl who you’re too embarrassed to say out loud, or it isn’t on a _ girl _ at all. The latter makes him more terrified than anything he could imagine, so he puts his mouth to work. Richie decides to be as crude as possible, telling the boys in his class who ask him the Cursed Question to; _ ‘Ask your mom instead, that’s where I was last night,’ _ or _ ‘Why don’t you ask _ blank_, we all know it’s me,’_. The jokes aren’t funny, at least not to him, but the others laugh and they eventually stop asking unless they want to face the wrath of Richie Tozier. He accepts it all with a grain of salt, but at least it stops him from thinking about it too much. Instead, he opens his mouth and let's anything and everything fall out of it while he listens to himself mindlessly. It isn’t fun, and it’s more draining than anything, but sometimes you have to shape yourself into a caricature. Be it for the sake of others or the safety of yourself. For Richie, he finds it’s both. 

\--------------------------

_Fall, 1989_

It isn’t until he’s thirteen that a few things start changing. Their group of three grows, to five nonetheless. Bill gets a girlfriend, and she’s the first to melt in with their triad effortlessly. Her name is Beverly Marsh, and Richie thinks she may be his totally platonic soulmate, no offense to Bill. She’s a firecracker, with her red hair and pale freckled cheeks, bruised arms and a quick witted mouth. They get along well, the two of them. She even coins a nickname for him, ‘Trashmouth,’ which he accepts dutifully and lives up to with ease. Things are great with Bill, Stan, Bev and him. Easy going and barely different than before, and Richie rarely thinks of Bev as a _ girl _ at all. At least not in the sense that he’s confused by her or fearful, and sometimes it makes him feel stupid for being so worried in the first place. Maybe he does understand girls, maybe he’s just developing slowly. That’s what his guidance counselor had said to him one day in 7th grade, when he had gotten in trouble for badgering Jason Whitter in his math class about fucking his sister. “_Boys who feel the need to make jokes like that are slow learners, Richard. No girl wants to date a boy who has no idea what he’s talking about.” _Richie had wanted to scream a little bit, at that moment. Tell her that he didn’t care, that he didn’t _ want _a girlfriend anyway, ask her what the hell he was supposed to do, then, to get people to stop asking him if he thought Rebecca Jukes was hot when he hadn’t been looking at her at all. He didn’t though, because all of that felt a little bit too much like admitting to something he didn’t even understand anyway. 

Either way, it turns out Beverly is one of the only girls he thinks he’ll ever understand, and that’s fine. Richie feels more at peace than not when he thinks about it only being the four of them forever. It’s only when Bill and Beverly kiss or hold hands, that he feels a little off. It isn’t jealousy, he knows that. And it isn’t longing, he knows that. The closest word he can come to in his vocabulary is humiliation. Because he doesn’t want someone to call his own, but he feels like he should. And because of the way he talks and acts, he feels like everyone else thinks he should too. 

A shy stocky kid who comes to Derry Middle in the 8th grade named Ben Hanscom is the next to join their little group of outcasts. He had gravitated towards their table at lunch on the first day of school for a myriad of reasons. First off being that their table was all the way in the back corner, hidden from the eyes of the staff and more importantly, Henry Bowers - who was like every school bully from every movie you’d ever seen only _ worse_. Secondly, if Richie remembers correctly, (and he must, because who else would’ve been sitting with _ them_?) their table was the only one that wasn’t filled to the brim with people. Which wasn’t like, something to be proud of, but at the same time Richie doesn’t care too much for bumping elbows and screaming laughter when he’s just trying to eat his lunch. Lastly, and Richie is sure this is the main reason; he had given Ben his best award winning, shit-eating grin. He still isn’t sure why he did it, maybe because he felt bad for the kid, or related to the far-away loneliness he carried about him in some way, he doesn’t know. But Ben had smiled back, granted not as wide as Richie had, and slowly made his way over. He had been holding three huge library books in one hand, and a lunch sack in the other, dressed in a grey sweatshirt and jeans despite the heat, and a blue baseball cap. 

“Hi,” he had said softly, making eye contact with each one of them, his eyes lingering on Beverly for just a second and on Bill and Beverly’s joined hands a second longer before dragging his eyes down to the floor. “I’m Ben,” there was a small chorus of ‘Hi Ben’s’ that followed from each of them in the group, and Richie caught Stan’s eye. Stan gave him a flash of a knowing smile, and in turn Richie nodded at him, short and jerky and barely there. It was the go ahead, because even though Bill was the quote unquote leader of the pack, Stan and Richie always found they were next in charge

“Well _ hello _there, Haystack,” Richie had responded, “Can I call you Haystack?”

“Well, actually-”

“Great! Pleased to meet you,” Richie interjected, earning a scoff from Bill and a light shove on the shoulder from Bev, accompanied by a soft _ ‘Be nice, Richie.’ _ which he had ignored because _ fuck you, Beverly, _ Richie was nothing but nice. “I’m Richie Tozier, but pretty much everyone ‘round these parts calls me _ ‘Trashmouth.’ _ Have a seat.” Richie slapped the spot next to him excitedly as Bill looked at Ben, offering him an eyeroll and that soft smile that always made the rest of them feel at ease.

“If you can’t tell why we call him t-trashmouth yet, just wait.” Bill muttered, and Ben hadn’t even reacted to Bill’s stutter, not really, and that had been enough to convince Richie they had made the right choice. Ben had taken a seat next to Richie, and as the group took turns introducing themselves, Richie didn’t miss the blush that graced Ben’s face when Beverly extended a slender, jeweled hand his way. Briefly his brain says to him, spits at him, rather; ‘_See! New Kid already has a crush. What’s the hold up?’ _before another part of his brain reminds him that Ben liking Beverly went against the Silent Rules of Boys and Dating, and then another part, the one that felt most like him, told them both to shove it. The devil and angel on his shoulders, only instead they're in his head and they don’t persuade him to make decisions - favoring making him feel crazy instead. All in all it's confusing and mostly annoying, and sort of worrying to think about for too long and once again he tucks both thoughts down and ignores them in favor of playing parts in the conversation. 

It’s just the five of them for awhile, a little over two years, in fact, and it’s just as much fun as you’d expect gaining two new best friends to be. Richie thinks back, briefly, to meeting Bill and Stan all those years ago. It was odd, the way they found people. The way that some people stayed and others didn’t, and he wonders how much of him would change as time went on because of the ones who did. He wonders who he’d be if he hadn’t met Bev and Ben, if he was still just the Richie Tozier who was friends with Bill and Stan. He wonders how much of them he carries with him, how different he’d be if he never carried Stan or Bill in the first place, had instead been only pieces of himself when he met Ben and Bev. If he would have met them at all. It’s a strange thing to think about, because he never feels himself change consciously, but he knows that in some ways he has - that there are pieces of him that exist solely because of his friends. He wonders how many pieces he’s given of himself during the trade, if there will be any left over if he loses them. He hopes he never has to find out. 

The five of them are as inseparable as he, Stanley and Bill had been before, only now the places they frequent aren't the same. Richie finds they rarely spend their time at _ anyone’s _ house anymore. Because five teenagers was a stretch from three, and their parents were sick of going grocery shopping only to find their kitchens raided by four boys in puberty and a girl who eats just as much as two combined. Because Beverly’s dad doesn’t let her have friends over. Because for some reason raising hell downtown felt more like a teenage rite of passage than raising hell in a living room did. They find spots for themselves instead, a forest but not really, down in the cracks of their small town, all lush green and wet to which they then refer to as The Barrens. That had been a little wordplay on Richie’s part because they were anything _ but _barren. The Quarry, too, just a bike ride and a trek through the trees away. A big, towering chunk of earth that overlooks the water. They climb the gate and throw middle fingers towards the glaring red “NO DIVING AT ANY TIME,” sign, because growing up meant doing things that could get you killed but probably wouldn’t and stomping around communal ground like you owned it. In Richie’s humble opinion, they did, but Richie knows that’s probably part of growing up too. A false sense of security and superiority that made you puff your chest out when you were with your friends and cower inside yourself when you weren’t, because they made you brave and you don’t know how to be without them around. 

They stay the five of them for the entirety of two and a half school years, and in the blistering stretches of months that pass in between Richie finds himself having the greatest summers of his life. His friends never harass him about Girls or Crushes, in fact they seem rather happy just keeping themselves to themselves. Richie gets that, they have a different kind of bond, all of them together. Hard to penetrate and even harder to understand. Bill and Bev break up, but it isn’t weird like it should be. They still come around just as often, and joke around almost more than before. Richie doesn’t let Ben’s cheeky, secret smile when Beverly tells them what happened go unnoticed, but he keeps his secret. 

\--------------------------

_Summer, 1990_

Before Richie meets Mike Hanlon, the boy who would grow to be the sixth member of the pack, Richie has a conversation with Ben.

It starts with the whole group over at Ben’s house one sticky summer evening, loose-limbed and sun-soaked from a day at the Quarry. They're watching horror movies on the floor, because they can’t all fit on the couch, and eating popcorn and chips and whatever other junk they had scoured their houses of before biking over. Ben had brought out a few of his favorites, ‘_The Shining’, ‘I Was a Teenage Werewolf,’ _ and '_Poltergeist,’ _among them. Richie really only has the attention span to watch one movie in its entirety, which ends up being The Shining, but he still thinks he likes that one the best. It was an odd sort of thriller, one that left him with a peculiar sense of longing to understand. Realistic, too, which is something he found lacking in other horror movies. Blood and solitary, psychic children and insanity, ghosts and haunted old hotels. Sure, why not? Shit happens. He currently has a theory that Derry doesn’t actually exist in the works. Whose he to say one day he won’t find himself in the same place as Jack Torrence? Cycling over versions of his life and death. Shit happens. 

Ben puts another movie in, and Richie stretches out his aching limbs over the front of the couch, holding his hand out and dancing his fingers in front of the TV. Blue light over pale skin. He moves to couch eventually, because solidarity meant shit if he couldn’t walk by the time the movie was over. He stretches out across the itchy cushions, back against the armrest and his arms balanced across his head. Richie glances between the movie and his friends, a family moving into a house in the middle of a sunny suburb and Bill yawning against his hand, covered in alternating colors. A little girl trapped inside of a TV and Beverly’s ringed fingers picking at the ends of her pajama pants. 

Bev and Stan are the first to fall asleep, Stan moving on the couch a little after Richie had and placing his legs in Richie’s lap carelessly. He falls asleep slowly, Richie notices, eyes blinking minutely and arms crossed on his chest. Beverly is next, and she has her head on a pillow on the ground and it doesn’t seem very comfortable, but it’s late and she’s nearly snoring so it must be better than it looks. Ben gets up once he notices, grabbing a few blankets and pillows from his room, coming back and dumping them on the floor. Moving quietly through the house and returning with two sleeping bags from his closet. Ben places one on the floor, gesturing at Bill to get into it as he shakes Bev awake. She startles before sitting up, and Ben removes his hand quick, like he’s touched a hot stove. 

“What?” Beverly asks tiredly, rubbing her eyes. “What is it?” Ben smiles at her softly, gentle and respectful and good.

“You lay in that, I’ll take the floor.” He says simply, gesturing at the sleeping bag next to her.

Beverly shakes her head, “No no, it’s okay. This is your house, I can sleep here.” 

“_Because _it’s my house, I’ll sleep on the floor.” Ben pats her leg, “C’mon, its okay,” Beverly smiles sweetly at him before standing up and stretching, bones cracking along with knuckles before stepping over and slipping inside of the sleeping bag. Ben hands her a pillow and she accepts it gratefully. 

She settles in and closes her eyes, a soft “You're the best, Ben Hanscom.” escaping her lips before she turns over. Ben doesn’t respond, but a flush has careened over his cheeks and he's grinning almost ear to ear. _Cute. _Richie thinks to himself, fucking juvenile, but cute. Beverly falls asleep rather quickly again, a trait Richie wishes he possessed, as Ben continues his mission of building Richie and himself places to sleep. Richie is still stationed on the couch, Stan’s feet still sitting atop his legs. Ben sets up the final two floor beds with amazing precision and smiles at Richie. 

“All yours, Rich.” 

Richie nods at him, removing his glasses and setting them on the table near him. He gives Stan’s calf a pat before lifting his legs to stand up and make his way over. Ben throws a blanket over Stanley, an act that makes Richie’s heart clench in the best way. Richie settles in between Bill and Ben, and Beverly, who is _ definitely _snoring now, is on Ben’s right side, and Richie knows he did it on purpose but he can’t really blame him. Richie feels wide awake, the fondness he feels for his friends filling him with a sort of adrenaline. Richie takes a glance at Bill next to him, and he’s still watching the movie even though his eyes are opening and closing slowly, his fatigue clear on his face. Richie gives a glance at Ben as well, but he seems to be filled with the same sort of adrenaline that Richie feels too, though probably for a different reason. 

A new movie plays, and Richie isn’t sure what it is considering he was getting situated when Bill had started it, but as he watches and sees some sort of slimy, sealike creature climb out of a pond, he’s pretty sure he gets the jist. Horror movies never really scared Richie, he found that mythical creatures weren’t really the root of his fear. He was more terrified of real life situations, like murderers and stalkers, Crushes and Adults, pick your poison and all that. Still, he watches with vague interest hoping that maybe it will bore him to sleep. Bill jumps when a door shuts loudly on the screen, and Richie snickers a little. 

“S-shut up!” Bill says softly, smiling. “How are you not scared?” There’s a wild, knowing look in his eyes that makes Richie roll his own. They’ve had this conversation before. 

“Because its fake,” Richie answers good-naturedly. “It’s all…” He trails off, his hands moving in weird gestures as he keeps his eyes on the screen. “Special effects, computer shit. Y’know?” Bill nods at that, and it seems to placate him a little bit. 

“Damn good special effects,” Ben pipes up from the corner, his blanket tucked under his chin. Bill laughs and nods agreeingly as Richie says;

“Aw, is little Benny Boy feeling nervous?” The sentence is condescending, but Ben knows Richie well enough to know there isn’t any ill will behind it. “I’ll hold your hand, make sure the big bad thing from the Black Lagoon doesn’t get you,” Ben shoves him lightly before giving him the finger. 

“Shut up, Tozier.” Ben murmurs, grinning and bright-eyed.

“That’s not what your mom said last night, y’know, Ms. Hanscom just absolutely _adores_ my dirty mouth.” Richie shoots back rather loudly, earning a surprised giggle from Ben.

“People are s-sleeping, you know,” Bill says, but his cheeks are flushed with life. Richie rolls his eyes at that, but after a quick look around at a still heavily snoozing Stan and Beverly, he lowers his voice before he speaks again.

“Sleeping is wot I was doing’ with your sistah, chap.” Richie says, and he’s the British Guy, now, the Voice melting into his words. The accent change makes Ben giggle harder as Bill narrows his eyes at him. 

“Your face and my ass, R-Richie. Your face and my ass.” Ben gasps at that and Bill laughs at him. Richie opens his mouth to make yet another crude comment at that, because_ come on_, Bill is walking right into it at this point.

Ben hits him with a “Beep Beep, Richie.” Before he can, and he says it fondly, but Richie looks at him with a look nearing on shocked. That wasn’t the first time Ben had ever used one of the little inside jokes the group had come up with, but Ben was still a little shy about it. Not wanting to offend, or step in where he doesn’t feel he belong. Whenever he does it has a way of making Richie’s eyes sparkle. 

“Beep Beep.” Richie agrees solemnly before turning back towards the TV.

They are relatively quiet for almost the rest of the movie, light comments from each of them occasionally but mostly they let themselves resonate in the calm silence. Almost twenty minutes before the end of the film, Richie turns towards Bill once again just to see him fast asleep. His eyes are shut and his mouth hung open, one hand flown over his eyes and another grasping his blanket. Skin tinged light blue from the television, shadows dancing on his face. Bill is rather nice looking, Richie concludes, not really wondering where the thought came from and not harassing himself for it either. It isn’t the first time he has admired one of his friends, let alone another guy. He stopped hating himself for it a few times after it had happened, deciding that it wasn’t doing any harm if it was just in his head. It isn’t like he would ever act on it, or anything. It was just, well, what it was. He clears his throat and looks toward Ben instead, jarring himself slightly when Ben is already looking at him, a strange look on his face. It isn’t necessarily a weirded out one, but pondering almost, confused maybe. 

“He’ll catch flies, sleeping like that.” Richie says in mock-exasperation, an explanation, a defense, using his hand to point at Bill with his thumb behind him like Ben needed to know who he was talking about. He expects Ben to say something about how Richie’s eyes had been trained on Bill, but he doesn’t.

“You aren’t wrong.” Ben says, and Richie grins at that, rolling over to face him. He isn’t sure what makes him say what he says next, maybe it's because he's worried Ben knows something he doesn’t, or shouldn’t, so Richie decides to even the score. 

“So, how’s that going?” He asks lightly, not above a whisper and and gesturing at Bev’s sleeping figure behind Ben. Ben’s eyes widen and a red color flushes his cheeks. 

“The - what?” He fumbles, shaking his head. 

“Calm down, it’s fine,” Richie says softly. “I know you like her, but I won’t tell anyone.” Ben searches his eyes, looking for a hint that Richie is being malicious or lying, but obviously he can’t find it because Ben takes a deep breath before letting out a sigh, his shoulders relaxing. 

“How _ do _you know?” Ben questions instead. Richie shrugs.

“Either you make it really obvious, or I’m just good at reading people,” Richie smiles at him reassuringly when Ben’s eyebrows raise up to his hairline at Richie’s first statement, “It’s probably the latter, trust me.” Ben nods, sparing a glance at Beverly. 

“It’s going,” Ben says simply with a slight shrug, his eyes still trained on her. “I just _ really _ like her. I don’t know what to do about it though. I don’t wanna scare her away, and I don’t want to fuck anything up.” He looks back at Richie. “You guys are the best friends I have ever had, the _only _friends I’ve ever had. I don’t wanna ruin everything over a dumb crush.” Richie nods at that, his heart giving a weak pang at the thought of a young Ben Hanscom alone at recess in elementary school before they had met him. 

“I would give it some time,” Richie starts, gesturing at the two of them. “Bill and Bev just stopped, y’know, whatever it was they were doing,” He makes eye contact with Ben as he continues, “But you wouldn’t ever fuck anything up. We wouldn’t ditch you, or anything.” Richie says sincerely. Ben smiles, but from the way it doesn’t reach his eyes Richie has a feeling Ben doesn’t believe him. And that sucks, it does, but Richie gets it. He worries sometimes, too. That he’ll say the wrong thing too many times in a row and they’ll tire of him, slowly separating themselves until he’s alone once again, like he was the first day of kindergarten. All that energy and all those things to say and nowhere to put them. 

“Don’t tell anyone, please?” Ben asks. 

“I said I wouldn’t.” Richie confirms with a meaningful look. Ben glances around then, trying to find a way to change the subject. 

“Well, how about you?”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Ben says softly, smiling at him. “I told you mine, you tell me yours. You got a crush on any girl in school?” Richie’s eyes cast downward at that, but he figures it’s only fair considering the secret Ben had just shared with him. 

“Nah, I honestly don’t have a crush on any of the girls. Don’t know if I’ve ever had one, to be honest._ ” _Richie says candidly. It’s the first time he has said it outloud, to one of his friends and not himself in the mirror, at least, and it both relieves him and presses a weight against his chest. Ben stares at him before looking down at his blanket, his hands tugging lightly on the loose threads. 

“Maybe a boy, then?” Ben asks quietly, but it makes Richie jump. It’s funny, the way people work. He’s watched three horror movies tonight and yet, the only thing that scares him - makes him want to cower under his blanket or run away - are four words. Richie stares at him, sharp and searching. He expects Ben to be wearing an angry look, or maybe an uncomfortable one, but he isn't. Ben is looking at him softly, almost encouragingly, no trace of judgment present. Unfortunately it doesn’t make Richie feel any better. 

A slightly broken, _ “What?” _ escapes Richie’s mouth.

“I’m not making any assumptions,” Ben says quickly, his hands up in surrender. “I just- I don’t know. I guess that was my way of saying that it’s okay if you do.” Richie stares at him, his mind reeling.

He had.. He had thought about it. Kind of. He knows that he finds boys attractive in the same way he knows he should find girls attractive. And maybe he _ does _ find girls attractive. Honestly, he doesn’t have fucking clue. It isn’t something he _ likes _ to think about. Richie stares at Ben wildly, his chest heaving ever so slightly, before he drops his head in his hands and lets out a soft groan, obviously not doing much to prove his Completely Heterosexual case.

“It’s _ okay, _ Richie.” Ben says. Richie shakes his head at that, because it’s _ totally _ not fucking okay, but he starts talking, because it’s what he knows how to do. He doesn’t know if he’s any good at talking about what really matters, about what makes him vulnerable, but he does know how to talk. Maybe they aren’t mutually exclusive. Maybe, when you spend so much time talking about nothing it turns into talking about something, only dressed up. Masked. A caricature. 

“I just don’t know,” He says to his hands, “I’ve never really had crushes, on anyone, but-” Richie sighs once again. “Maybe.. Maybe I like both?” He asks, raising his head to look at the wall, “Can you - Can you do that? _ Can _you like both?” Richie makes eye contact with Ben then, looking at him as if he has all the answers. Shit, maybe he does. Ben has a contemplative look on his face though, so Richie guesses he doesn’t. 

“Fuck if I know,” Ben says with a shrug, “But if you do, then you do. It doesn’t matter if anyone else does, or if there’s - I don’t know - a _ word _ for it.” He smiles at Richie softly, “If you like both, you like both. Just know that it won’t make a difference to me.” Richie looks at Ben like he’s some sort of mythical being, a wizard, a warlock, an all knowing turtle, and feels a surge of love for him. Bev may have been right on the money, Ben Hanscom really is the best. 

“Thanks,” is all Richie can muster, but he feels a smile creep onto his face as well. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? Please?” Ben waves his hand, as if the thought is beyond him. 

“I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine, deal?”

“Deal.” Richie says, now feeling almost inexplicably lighter than ever before. Ben reaches over to give Richie a quick squeeze on the shoulder before grabbing the remote. He doesn’t turn the television off, somehow knowing Richie needs the distraction more than anything else. He does turn it down though, before settling into his spot and tugging the blanket over his shoulders.

“Goodnight Richie,” Ben says and closes his eyes. 

“Goodnight, Haystack. Thank you again.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Ben replies but he’s got a smile on his face. “Don’t worry about it, Trashmouth. Go to bed.” 

Richie d_oesn’t _ go to bed, not until the clock hanging on the wall near the television reads _ 4:58am_, but when he does he feels an odd sense of relief. Not only did he talk about it, but it was _ okay. _ At least with one of them. That was more than enough, even if it was just for now. 

\--------------------------

_Fall, 1990_

The way Richie meets Mike Hanlon is a day he looks back on with mixed feelings. Granted it’s a few years later by the time he can actually do that, and by then Richie doesn’t really notice, but when he _ does _ look back on it, it’s almost jarring how everything fell into place. Richie is finding that to be a common theme, in his life. Things falling into place. Maybe it’s like that with everyone.

It’s six months into his sophomore year, and once again he finds himself at a table in the back of the cafeteria. Only now it’s at Derry High School and not Derry Middle, and there are no lunch duties, not anymore. Henry Bowers is still there, because of course he is, but the last time Richie checked he sits under the bleachers with his own little group of assholes.

Stan is saying something about his biology test, and Beverly is begging him for any hints as she’s taking it next period. It’s in vain, because best friends or not, Stan would _ never _ help someone cheat on a test. The little mongul. Richie stares at his plate of school-lunch food quietly, stabbing at his mashed potatoes. He felt weird, to say the least. Maybe a little out of it, and it was possible he was getting sick, having been splashing around in the Quarry yesterday until the late afternoon. He had done it alone and everything, his friends refusing to get in because it was _autumn__, Richie, Jesus Christ, _ but whatever. It had been cold, that's for sure, but almost refreshing. _ Cleansing. _If they refuse to live a little that isn’t on him. He just feels - distant now, quiet even, which is really rare considering he can never get his brain to stop spitting out jumbled words and overexcited sentences about literally anything. For some reason he can’t stop thinking about the conversation he and Ben had over a year ago.

It’s probably Ben’s fault. No, scratch that, it is _ decidedly _ Ben’s fault. Ben had kept his promise, he hadn’t told anyone his secret and in turn Richie had kept his as well. But Ben Hanscom, as it turned out, was ever the suggestive little shit. He was always smiling at Richie knowingly for literally no reason, and wagging his eyebrows whenever Richie was talking to _ anyone, _ boy or girl, as long as they weren’t already in his friend group. Richie guesses Ben meant it in a supportive way, his own way of proving to Richie that it was fine, that Ben didn’t care one way or another which really was _ sweet_, when Richie thought about it for long enough to come to that conclusion. Most of the time it just turned him into a flushing, stuttering mess, which was humiliating and not at all like him. Silently, he curses his friends in his mind. Maybe that was something he had picked up from one of them along the way, a nervous habit. It probably isn’t likely, but wouldn’t that be an easy way to cut it? Saying that the parts of yourself that you didn’t like were there only because you traded a better part of yourself for it? Too easy. Richie should know by now that two words like that couldn't be used to describe his life.

It was never obvious enough for the others to notice, but everytime Ben so much as looked at him with that funny little glint in his eyes Richie nearly regretted telling him. No matter how good it felt to finally say it or how good-natured Ben meant it, it always had its way of making this sick, nervous feeling creep into his limbs. Ben Hanscom could accept Richie all he wanted to, but Ben wasn’t his only friend, or the rest of Derry, or Richie _ himself _ for that matter. And until Richie could come to terms with the fact that he was queer or half-queer or whatever the fuck, (and seriously, Richie _ needs _ to find the word for whatever this is because this floundering confusion was really starting to get tiring) he doesn’t think that sick, nervous feeling would ever go away. 

He _ is _grateful he told Ben though, because Richie thinks he definitely would have gone absolutely insane by now if this was all stuck in his head, silent teasing and wagging eyebrows aside. He couldn’t have asked for a better reaction. He sticks his fork into his mashed potatoes with another heaving sigh and pushes his plate away, his ever so eager appetite betraying him. 

Stan hears that, and stops talking enough to glance at him with a slightly concerned expression. “What’s up with you today, Rich?” Stan asks, his tone soft and maybe slightly exasperated because Richie had been sighing dejectedly _ all _lunch. Richie shrugs, bringing his gaze up to Stan. 

“Just feel weird,” He admits simply, “And really fucking bored. I would seriously rather run a mile right now then go to Geo next period.” Which was true, because although Richie felt silent his body was constantly buzzing with insistent energy. His hands were shaking a little and his right knee bouncing so hard that it kept hitting the table. That makes Beverly snort a bit, though her piercing blue eyes were trained on him with a gentle sort of worry. She knew how much Richie _ despised _ phys ed. Bill reaches his hand out to steady one of Richie’s, which had began tapping lightly on the table despite its trembling nature. Richie turns to look at him, and Bill has one of his eyebrows raised slightly in apprehension, and a soft questioning look in his eyes. Richie nods at him, reading his silent, ‘_Okay?’ _ and laces his own hands together. 

“We can always skip,” Stan mumbles, barely there, but Richie turns to look at him, surprised and enthralled. Stanley Uris, skipping class. Now _ that _was almost as unheard of as Richie keeping still and silent for over thirty minutes. Richie must be gaping at him, because Stan rolls his eyes with a little smirk and says, “Shut up,” although Richie hadn’t said anything. That was probably Richie’s favorite thing about their little group. By now words weren’t always necessary, simple gestures and expressions clearly telling everyone what they needed to know. 

“You’re being serious?” Richie questions, mood already picking up at the thought of being able to get the hell out of there and even more so at Stan misbehaving for his sake. “Stanley Uris,” Richie beams, voice sweet and eyelashes fluttering, “Kiss me, do it. I am falling hopelessly in love with you,” Stan reaches over and punches his shoulder with a snort but doesn’t get a chance to respond because Ben beats him to it. 

“Stan's right,” Ben says with a shrug, “I have free period next anyway, and then english. We all know Ms. Jones loves me, it wouldn’t hurt my grades to miss one day.” Richie glances at Ben, and Ben has got a warm tinge in his cheeks and his eyes are a little wild. It feels _ good _to have people to do this stuff with. Stupid teenage coming of age bullshit, skipping school and jumping off cliffs and sharing cigarettes.

Richie looks at Beverly next, and she’s already shoving her science folder back into her jade green backpack. “I would take anything over that stupid biology test I totally, unintentionally forgot to study for,” She says with a lilt in her voice, sarcasm playing on the corners on her mouth, “I have free period tomorrow anyway, so I can take it then. It’d be nice to pass the damn thing.” Ben giggles and Richie can hear Stan briefly promising Bev that he will help her study later tonight, but Richie's got his eyes on Bill. 

“How 'bout you, Big Bill?” Richie asks, placing a hand on his shoulder, “You in for a little Loser’s Club adventure?” He smirks, a name for the group spilling into his mind and out of his mouth before he can even think about it, as most things did. It worked, though, that’s what they were. He sees the words in his head the way he sees others, Adults and Girls and Crushes, but this is different. These aren’t words capitalized and made prominent out of fear or lack of understanding. Instead it’s a title, a claim on their group. A tagline, maybe, something he could spray paint under bridges or carve into trees. Proof that they existed. Something like pride fills his chest at the new ownership of the word that had been thrown at each and every one of them countless times. They _ were _ losers, _ his _losers. Henry Bowers and his ugly little gang of assholes could shove it. Bill’s eyes brighten at it, no doubt thinking nearly the same thing Richie had. Richie, Bill and Stan had that way about them, this little telepathic connection wherein they could almost always tell what the other was thinking. Richie caters that towards the time they had spent together, and he has no difficulty believing that with time Ben and Beverly would be able to do the same. 

“Sure, Tozier,” Bill says, smiling slightly and patting Richie’s arm that still resides on his shoulder. “Let’s raise s-some hell,” Richie lets out a triumphant cackle at that, removing his arm to curl it in towards himself, elbow bent and hand clenching in a fist. 

“Fuck yeah,” Richie mutters as he stands up and moves towards Bev, loseley hanging an arm over her shoulders, waiting on Ben and Stan to pack their things up. 

“What was that you called us?” Beverly asks, turning her head slightly to look at Richie, “The Loser’s Club?”

Richie nods excitedly, glasses falling down his face just a little. “The Loser’s Club,” He confirms. Bev raises one hand to shove Richie’s glasses back up before nodding at him, something warm in her eyes.

“I like that, you’re brilliant.”

“I might be,” He jokes, tugging her in slightly before untangling himself and smiling at the trio who had joined behind them. “Ready to go?” 

Stan smiles at him and flicks his head lightly “As I’ll ever be.” while Ben nods behind him. Richie throws his arms over both Ben and Stan’s shoulders and begins walking towards the back door of the cafeteria. 

“Let’s raise some hell,” Richie quips, eyes wide and excited and heartbeat quickening in his chest. Stupid teenage coming of age bullshit. 

Getting out isn’t actually much of a challenge, especially with Beverly and Richie in tow, having skipped classes every once in awhile to smoke or trapiese around town whenever anything got to be a bit overwhelming. Bev needing space and a distracting sort of solitude and comfort from Richie when her dad started getting to her a little _ too _much, or Richie simply needing to get out of the confined space of a stuffy classroom when his legs were buzzing uncomfortably and the only thing that could placate him were one of Beverly’s menthol cigarettes and her ringed hand in his hair. Like he said, platonic soulmate. 

They curve around the back of the school, the five of them, once they’ve snuck out the back door and around the left entrance of the school to avoid the office aid who stalked the right one. They grab each of their bikes from the stand while Beverly opens the gate that leads to a little path behind the outer chain link fence that protects Derry High School. The path is long and narrow, slightly uphill and caged on both sides. The fence on the right side extends almost all the way around the school and ends right in front of the dip of the hill it rests on, leading down into the creek and eventually the Barrens. 

The group walks their bikes in a straight line as opposed to riding them so they’re quiet in order to not draw attention to themselves. Richie feels the crunch of the leaves under his feet, and breathes in the wet, mossy smell that _ is _Derry in autumn. He follows behind Bev and Bill, feet stepping in tandem like those of a drumline and stares at the sky through the opening of trees that cascade on either side of the path. 

Once they make their way up the small slope and open the other gate at the end, they are officially off school property. The gate opens up into the street that curves right before them, and they spread out on the sidewalk once they get there. There’s a brief moment of silence between them, standing in a small circle and glancing at each other wildly, cheeks warm and eyes dazzling. Stan lets out a surprising exhilarated laugh, looking behind himself to where Derry High School stands and then back in front as if mentally placing himself out of it. Richie gets that, having reacted nearly the same way the first time he’d done this, fourteen and wide eyed. Stan gives them all a look, his mouth widening into a bright grin. 

“Holy _ shit, _” Stan giggles helplessly. 

“Holy shit,” Richie agrees, grinning at him. 

“I can’t believe I just did that!” Stan says excitedly, causing Ben to agree and Beverly to roll her eyes fondly, eyeing Richie slightly in disbelief. Richie simply raises his eyebrows back at her before gesturing onward. 

“So,” Richie starts, turning around to walk backwards and glance at his friends who have started after him too, “Where to?” He doesn’t mount his bike just yet, because biking and talking was _ hard _and he figures they should actually have a destination in plan before they speed off into the sunset. Or the dusty mid afternoon. Take your pick.

“We could go to the B-barrens,” Bill says with a shrug, tapping the bell on his bike. Not enough to make it ring but enough to give his hands something to do. Richie makes a face at that. 

“Bleh,” Richie cringes, “Barrens, shmarrens, we were just there, like two days ago.” Richie nearly trips over his own feet, but catches himself. It’s enough to convince him to turn around and walk straight though, so he continues talking by looking over his shoulder.

Stan has caught up with him, walking next to Richie side by side and using his shoulder to jar Richie a little bit as they move. “Something else, anyone else, Ben!” Richie says, looking Ben right in the eye as best he can from his current angle. Ben seems a little caught off guard at the attention, and at how Beverly is walking right next to him, her shoulder brushing his ever so slightly. “Pick a place, any place. Except for the library. We are _ not _skipping school to go to the fucking library.”

Ben gawks at that in mock-offense. “The library is fun!”

Richie lets out a squawk. “_Fun?” _He questions, stopping in his tracks and turning around again as Ben, Bill and Beverly make their way closer toward him and Stan. “The library. Fun. That is fantastic, Haystack. Tell me another.” Richie says, and by now the trio is close enough that Ben gives him a weak shove and Richie has to hop a little from foot to foot to avoid being run over by his bike.

Richie turns himself back towards the street and keeps walking, Stan and Bill on either side now and Beverly and Ben not far behind him. “Beverly Marsh, my moon, my stars, the one woman I trust with my heart, _ please _ tell me you have something better.” Richie drawls, not bothering to turn back around. By now they have walked the length of two streets and come towards the turn that leads them out of the neighborhood and into the city of Derry. _ Salvation, _Richie thinks, albeit a little crazily, humming a bit to himself. Beverly thinks for a moment as they turn the corner until they’ve come to the first cross-walk of their journey, stopping to wait for the go ahead. 

“How about we go see a movie?” Beverly tries, shrugging lightly. “The Aladdin is open and it’s like, one in the afternoon on a Tuesday. No one will be there.” She’s right about that too, Derry is already an insanely small town, and it was rare that the theater was busy at all aside from Friday nights when a new movie finally made its way to it. It would be a practical ghost town right now.

Bill calls his affirmation from the left of her, saying “I’m in to go s-see that new action picture everyone has been talking about,” Ben nods at that, immediately launching into an excited discussion with Bill about how good it looked. Richie nods his agreement, pressing the button on the traffic light impatiently. 

“The Aladdin and that new action picture everyone has been talking about it is, then,” Richie echoes and finally mounts his bike. He hears the telltale signs of his friends doing the same, and whoops when the light finally turns and he can push off the street into a steady glide. He isn’t first in the race for long though, Bill seemingly having a special talent for biking really fast despite his bike being 3 years older than the rest of theirs. Richie doesn’t mind much, he likes the way Bill screeches;

“High yo Silver, Away!” Confidently, stutter free and without fail every time.

\--------------------------

It takes about ten minutes max for the group to burst into the nearly empty movie theater, parking their bikes and buying their tickets up front from the middle-aged woman who has been working at the theater for as long as Richie can remember. Ethel, Richie thinks, or Mary, probably. It’s honestly surprising that she can’t be older than 25, considering Richie is nearing 16 and she has looked like she was pushing 30 since Richie was six, but whatever. It gave Richie a chance to try on the Voice he had been toying with, somewhere between a mix of an old Scottish man and a foreign army general. Honestly, he isn't really sure. She hadn’t even reacted, not really, her left eyebrow quirking up ever so slightly on her otherwise stone-like face as she handed him the tickets. She had moved her eyes slowly from Richie and instead set her gaze on Beverly as she let out a monotone; “Enjoy the show, kids,” like a robot or something. Anyway, such is life. You can’t get 'em all. 

They’re laughing while they walk in, a little high on adrenaline from their Escape from Derry High and the excitement of being the only ones in the theater for this movie Ben, Bill and now Stan are practically buzzing for. They have about fifteen minutes until it starts, so they make their way to the concession stand. Richie is half expecting to see Eric, the old man who always works there. Eric is a great guy, in Richie’s opinion. He looks about halfway to 100 but he’s quick-witted and for some reason thinks Richie is just the bees knees, and always lets the group get free popcorn refills in exchange for Richie doing his best Jack Nicholson impression, which Richie does gladly. 

As Richie walks up with his friends in tow, he’s a little surprised to see a kid working the stand, one Richie doesn’t recognize at all. He isn’t a kid, to be fair, as he appears to be a head taller than Richie which was _ odd _ considering Richie had sprouted up in the ninth grade and hadn’t really stopped. Another _ odd _ thing was the fact that he hadn’t ever seen him before, either. In case you haven’t caught on, Derry is a small town. Like _ freakishly _small, and everyone knows literally everyone and it’s kind of weirdly comforting but also really annoying. There wasn’t anyone in this town who didn’t know your last name or your parents jobs or that really embarrassing thing you did however many years ago. But here he is, the paradox, in the form of an African-American boy trying to turn on the popcorn machine. He is tall, but not necessarily lanky, and he’s got big brown eyes and short black hair and he’s dressed in this humiliating but also kind of endearing uniform. He’s also like… kind of cute? But Richie doesn’t think on that for too long. Look but don’t touch. Look but don’t act. Things can only hurt you if you acknowledge them, even if said things happen to be your own mind and attraction to boys.

Stan walks ahead of Richie and he follows, as Beverly and Bill go to get the drinks and Ben goes to get the candy. They know each others drink orders by now, so not much back and forth has to occur. Sprite for Richie and Bev, Dr. Pepper for Stan, Coke for Bill and a Diet Pepsi for Ben, because under his insistence it; _ Tastes Better! _ Richie stands by him though, because after one night of constant berating from the others Ben had Richie try a regular one and then a diet one, and he was actually right. Yet another point for Haystack. 

The kid behind the counter gives them a warm smile, and Richie squints behind his glasses to read the name tag. _ Mike. _ Definitely does not ring a bell. Or - it does, but one for his cousin off in Long Island or Ohio or Indiana, not Mike the concession stand worker. Richie gives him his best grin as Stan asks for a large popcorn with butter, cause he’s the greatest. As the kid, _ Mike, _his brain reminds him, begins filling up the tub with popcorn Richie sets his elbows on top of the glass counter, smirking at Stan slightly, 

“So, Mike,” Richie says, and Mike smiles as he sets the popcorn near Richie’s hands and recieves a warm, ‘Thanks,’ from Stan. “How is it that we haven't ever crossed paths, my dear boy?” Mike’s eyebrows crinkle slightly at that, but his smile doesn’t waver. 

“Maybe because you don’t find yourself at the movie theater every Monday through Thursday from 9 to 3?” He questions back, and Richie’s grin deepens impossibly. 

“Working man has a mouth on him, I see it. I can respect it.” He chirps, drumming his fingers on the countertop. He’s about to ask another question before Stan beats him to it. 

“Don’t let him scare you off,” Stan says with a gesture towards Richie, “We don’t let him out into the world too often, he isn’t people trained.” Richie gawks at Stan, giving him a weak shove as Mike laughs. 

“Y’all are funny,” Mike hums warmly and Richie’s eyes fall back on him, eyebrows raising and a playful tilt curving the corner of his mouth. 

“_Y’all_?” He questions good naturedly, “Well I’ll be damned,” Richie continues, his Southern Belle Voice seeping into his words, “I hardly reckoned we had another cowboy down in these here fine parts, shoulda said that first!” Mike’s eyebrows raise higher, and he eyes Stan slightly confused but all Stan can do is offer a light shrug. 

“What’d I say?” Stan asks, “Not people trained.” Mike chuckles at that as Stan translates for Richie, “I think what my dear, socially-handicapped friend here is trying to say,” Stan continues, over Richie’s weak protests because _ that _ was just simply unfair. BirdMan himself calling _ Richie _socially handicapped. Please. “Is that we haven’t ever seen you at school, and Derry is a super small town. Just weird we haven’t met.” Mike nods in understanding before shrugging. 

“I’m homeschooled,” Mike confides, “I live on the farm, a little past Neibolt Street?” He says, and Richie and Stan nod in recognition. 

“Wait, wait,” Richie says, eyes going a little wide, “Next to the Bower’s farm?” He inquires and Mike nods. “Oh, you poor soul. You must be so brave.” He gives Mike a little salute which Mike responds too with one of his own. 

“Yeah, he’s a real piece of work isn’t he?” Mike says conversationally, “That Bowers kid. Henry, right?” 

“Henry Bowers,” Stan confirms with an eye roll, “The worst thing God has ever shit out,” Mike cracks up at that one, nodding in agreement.

Richie feels a cold arm around his shoulder, and he looks over at Beverly who has taken her place next to him. “Bev!” He exclaims joyously, and ties his own arm around her shoulders, smiling brightly at her and then at Bill and Ben who stand behind her, “Drinks taken care of?” He asks. 

“You bet,” Ben muses, smiling and handing Richie his Sprite which Richie takes with a grateful hand. He takes a sip before turning back towards Mike. 

“Who's your new best friend, Rich?” Bev asks, smiling warmly at Mike behind the counter. 

“Well Beverly, this is..” Richie trails off for just a second, his brain never failing him when it comes to nicknames, “Homeschool.” He says decidedly, gesturing towards Mike with his cup in hand. Mike raises his eyebrows at that, but doesn’t get a chance to comment before Richie takes turns introducing the rest of them. 

“That skinny, curly drink of Jewish water is Stanley,” Richie jokes, which earns him a brief smack on the head from Stan. Richie turns towards Bill and Ben before turning back to Mike. “And those two in the back are Ben and Bill. I,” He continues graciously, bending his knees into a half-assed sort of curtsey as best he can with one arm slung over Beverly and another linked in Stan’s, “Am Richie Tozier, at your service. Were... sort of a club. So club,” Richie says, gesturing at them, “Meet Homeschool.”

“Hi,” Mike says with a little laugh and a wave, “I’m Mike, by the way, Mike Hanlon. My name isn’t homeschool.”

Ben snorts at that, “You meet Richie Tozier, you get a nickname. It’s like a rite of passage.” 

“Ah,” Mike chuckles, “Should’ve seen that coming.” Richie smiles at that, preening at the attention. He liked having that sort of reputation, even if it only existed within this group of people. “Anyway, you guys need anything else?” He asks, shaking his head slightly as if coming out of a daze and realizing he was actually still at work. 

“No, I t-think we're good.” Bill says warmly from the back, smiling at Mike kindly. 

“Okay,” Mike says with a nod and gestures his head towards the left where the hall opens up to the theaters. “Enjoy your show then. It was nice to meet y’all.” Something about the way his eyes sort of droop makes Richie feel sad, and Beverly notices too because she asks, 

“Why don’t you come watch it with us?” Mike has a surprised look on his face, like being invited wasn’t even something he had considered. That _ sucks, _Richie thinks, and decides that anyone who ever left a kid like Mike Hanlon out sucks pretty bad too.

“Yeah!” Stan says from his left, “No one is here anyway, it’ll be fun.” Mike smiles widely at that, looking between the five of them for confirmation. He remembers something though, and sighs dejectedly. 

“Thanks, guys, that’s really nice.” He admits, shoulders slumped a little, “I can’t though. My shift isn’t over for another hour or two.” 

“We can wait,” Ben pipes up with a shrug, “Till your shift is done, I mean. There’s another showing at 3:00pm, we already have our tickets.” Mike looks even more surprised at that, staring at Ben with wide eyes. 

“Oh, no,” Mike says, hands waving in surrender, “You don’t have to do that, it’s okay,”

“C’mon,” Stan voices his encouragement, “Anyone that can give it to Richie Tozier as well as they can take it deserves some sort of reward.” Richie smirks at the innuendo but keeps quiet, genuinely _ not _wanting to scare Mike off with a gay sex joke this early in a blossoming friendship. Give it a day or so, you know? Mike smiles brightly and glances at each of them again. 

“If you’re sure, I would really like that. Don’t worry about the ticket times or anything, I can get us in.” 

“Hell yeah you can, Homeschool,” Richie grins, “Popcorn refills, too?” He asks hopefully, and Mike gives him a good natured eye roll. 

“The least I can do,” Mike answers.

The group parts ways from him and makes their way to the arcade which is located to the left of the concession stand. All neon lights and dirty carpet, like stepping into another world. The Aladdin was all warmth, red carpets and red walls and gold accents, the tingling scent of burnt popcorn and stale air. The arcade is different, the air is cooler than inside the theater, filled with something that smells sharper than the buttery sweetness of the lobby. Crisp and sterile, not enough that it burns your nose, instead more like taking a big gulp of cold air. 

Richie gets in first, practically pushing past Ben to get to Street Fighter, setting his drink off onto the side and pushing one of his quarters into the slot. As he waits for the game to load, he spares a glance to his left and then his right to take notice of his friends. Bill is already stationed in front of Galaga, his hands moving at an almost worryingly fast pace as he races to beat the highscore that he had probably set himself. Bill was like, kind of embarrassingly obsessed with Galaga. Beverly and Ben are stationed at the air-hockey table, and he sees Bev completely _ destroying _Ben within the first ten seconds. Sure, Ben may be doing the gentlemanly thing and letting her win, but that was highly unlikely. Beverly was a goddamn master at arcade games. 

Stan is right next to him, on the Pac-Man machine. Richie didn’t understand Pac-Man at all, but Stan loved it and well, watching Stan kill it at anything made his chest fill with a sort of motherly-like pride. Stan was always just sort of a businessman type of person, even at 15. He could crack jokes and was nearly fluent in Richie Tozier, but he was clean-kept and mature and good in school. It’s nice to see him act like a kid, eyes focused and tongue poking outside the corner of his mouth, jumping up and down whenever he beat a level. 

Richie moves his eyes back to his own screen and presses _start _ with the left button, briefly shaking his shoulders like he was preparing for an actual fight, which in his opinion, he was. He plays his rounds easily, quick fingers against sticky red and blue buttons and levers. Richie has a sense of power whenever he plays this game. He isn’t Richie Tozier: a buck toothed, coke-bottle-eyed, lanky loser anymore. Suddenly he’s Richie Tozier: tough, quick and frankly hard as shit. This Richie Tozier doesn’t get bullied at school, he doesn’t run from Henry Bowers, he doesn’t get scared of Adults or Girls or being queer. He beats the hell out of anyone who comes at him, and he never, _ ever, _loses. Richie Tozier is a winner, or at least less of a loser and more of a Loser, titled and belonging. 

They play for a bit, the five of them, Bill eventually switching with Stan at some point and then moving to alternate the four of them into air-hockey, but Richie stays in his place. None of his other friends really like this game, or maybe they do and just see how quiet and laser-eyed Richie gets and how he cheers and laughs while pointing proudly when he beats a round, and they leave him to it. Supporting him when he wins and even when he doesn’t, but mostly just staying on the sidelines. Conversing loudly enough so he can throw little quips and responses over his shoulder so he isn’t ever left out. They don’t have to, but he’s grateful for it. 

Eventually Mike comes from around the corner, dressed in blue jeans and a grey t-shirt with something on it Richie can’t really make out, even with his glasses on because his eyes are a little bleary from staring at the screen for a little over an hour.

Mike gives them a light wave and calls out a “Hey guys!” 

“Uno momento, Michael,” Richie says, biting his lip and shoving his hand down to give the guy on the screen the final kick as the music runs out and the screen shows a; _You WON! _Richie saves the game and grabs his nearly empty soda cup and turns towards him. He smiles at Mike, pointing his thumb behind his shoulder as he quips, “Did you see me absolutely _ wreck _that guy? God I’m good,”

“I _ did,_” Mike says, matching his enthusiasm, “It’s good to know you're humble. Wouldn’t want you getting a big head, or anything, y’know?” He jokes, smiling at Richie. Richie nods proudly as Beverly comes up behind him with Ben in tow, looping her arm loosely within Richie’s and taking a loud slurp of her drink.

“Richie, with a big head?” She says sarcastically, “_Never_, Mikey, that’s just unheard of.”

Mike leads them back through the concession stand, filling up the popcorn and instructing them to refill their drinks. They gather what they need, sneakers against sticky linoleum and they hand Mike their money. Once they're done, Mike leads them through the dark hallway, filled with posters of movies that had probably been out in theaters everywhere else, but instead read ‘Coming Soon’ at the top. That was just Derry, old and tired and more than a little bit behind.

The tickets have been discarded, and Mike opens the door to the 3:30pm showing of ‘Total Recall’ which Richie had never heard of before in his life. Ben and Bill are fucking _ jazzed _though, nearly bouncing with excitement so Richie takes that as a good sign. Ben has an awesome taste in movies and Bill has an amazing knack for stories, so their recommendations were usually taken as gospel. The theater is completely empty, so they make their way to the second row from the back and settle in.

Mike is like, really fucking cool. He's a little shy, but he’s nice and actually super funny, playing into Stan and Richie’s banter with an ease like he’s known them for years. To be fair it kind of feels like he has, melting almost so fluidly with their group that Richie feels like he may as well have skipped school with them. That’s the other thing that makes him enticing, he’s _ different. _ Mike doesn’t go to Derry High, doesn’t really know anything about them, but he’s real trusting. Which for an African-American boy in the 1980’s, in Derry fucking Maine, no less, is really kind of honourable. Richie takes pride in his friends, then, because he’s glad that if they happen to be the first friends Mike has ever made, they are also _ really _ fucking cool.

The actual trailers come on eventually, and Richie watches them with mild interest. They don’t get to do this often, his group of friends, so there wasn’t really any point in being too excited about anything coming out. Richie takes sips of his Sprite, his hand cool with condensation, while Ben passes a box of candy down the line and he dumps a handful out when it gets to him before handing it to Mike. 

Richie allows himself to resonate in the contentment he feels right then, smiling secretly to himself. He hopes Mike can hang out more, after this. It’ll be a little difficult, sure, because he doesn’t go to school with them and lives kind of far away but the point still stands. It wasn’t often Richie felt like anyone could really click with their group, especially as more time passes by. They’re oddly close, a hell of a lot closer than any other sort of clique at their school, and although they have acquaintances in classes and occasional hang outs down at the Barrens with a few other kids, there's always a sort of understanding with everyone else that they weren’t _ really _ going to fit in. Not that there were people busting down the door or anything to hang out with the school’s oddballs, but still. Mike fits, he works, and although Richie isn’t sure what makes him different from any other outcast or weirdo that gravitates towards them before eventually pulling away when they can’t necessarily penetrate the bond, he has a feeling in his chest, certainty almost, that Mike is _ supposed _to fit. Like one big puzzle you’d pick up at a second-hand store. Not perfect, a little rough around the edges and probably missing a few pieces, but enough there that you can make out the picture clear as day. Whatever. Mumbo jumbo metaphor shit aside, Richie liked Mike, Mike liked his friends, and he added to the group as opposed to taking from it and that’s all Richie could really ask for anyway. 

\--------------------------

Total Recall, as it turns out, is fucking _ great. _ Richie wasn’t really a big fan of action movies, which he _ knows _ goes against the like, Rulebook for Boys, but what can you do. There were a lot of things about Richie Tozier that went against that book. More than he liked to admit. Richie was a realist type guy when it came to movies, alright? If he couldn’t actually believe anything that was going on could happen in real life, it didn’t catch his attention. This one, however, was one for the books. The lead actor, whatever his name happened to be, was _ brilliant. _ Tough as nails and ready to fight any sort of danger that came his way. He was also like...Hot. But whatever. Richie thinks it would be more embarrassing if his sexual awakening had been _ because _ of some balding middle-aged dude in _Total Recall_, of all movies, had he not already figured out he was sort of into guys. 

It reminds Richie of the version of himself he feels like whenever he plays Street Fighter. He thinks it would be pretty damn cool to grow up to be someone like Douglas Quaid. Fightin’ evil and bad guys and all that stuff. Richie thinks to himself that maybe, realistically, he could grow up to be like the actor that played him. _ Pretending _to fight evil and bad guys. From the safety of a set. With a stunt double. Yeah, that could work. He will grow up to be the Actor who plays Douglas Quaid. He should probably learn his name. 

“Hey Ben,” Richie starts, as they trail out of the theater in a cluster, “What was that dudes' name? The one who played tough guy?” 

Ben smiles a little knowingly, making a noise of consideration before saying “Arnold Schwarzenegger. You know, you should let us stick around for the credits sometimes, they’re actually kind of interesting because you can see how much really goes into making a movie.” He trails off, Richie waving a hand at him dismissively but not rudley. 

“Ben, even if we did stay for the credits, I am as blind as a _ literal _bat.” Richie divulges, adjusting his glasses subconsciously and then pointing at them. “I don’t wear these things for fun, y’know. No matter how pretty they make me look.” 

“And you sure look pretty,” Stan pipes up from behind him, laugh teasing at his voice.

“Thank you, Staniel. You flatterer,” 

Mike leads them towards the front, waving his hand in greeting at the new person working the concession stand as he passes. He opens the door and lets them out, leading them to the bike stand over by the front. The sun has set now, or it’s nearly done setting as it’s almost 5 o’clock and mid autumn in Maine. The front of the Aladdin is lit up, huge bulbing lights around the sign out front illuminating the street. Apart from that, it's pretty much empty. There are a few people lingering outside of the theater, and Richie can see a couple or two sitting in the dingy diner down the street, neon lights and the overwhelming smell of breakfast food. A few stores are still open, but aside from the employees lingering in them business is definitely _ not _ booming. It’s a little eerie out, as Derry sort of always is, like an abandoned set in old Hollywood. Pretty, clean cut and safe at first glance, but the longer you look the stranger it turns. Flat empty buildings and foam brick walls. 

“Thanks again, for letting me see the movie with you guys,” Mike says as he pulls his bike out from the rack. 

“Anytime, anytime,” Richie replies as he does the same, steadying his hands on the handlebars and leaning forward slightly. 

“It was our pleasure, really,” Beverly says sweetly. 

“Yeah, actually,” Bill starts, “W-we’re planning on going d-down to the Barrens tomorrow after school? At like three, or something. You wanna come?” He mimics Richie’s position once he’s got his bike stationed between his legs. 

“The barrens?” Mike asks, looking at Bill a little funnily.

Ben nods from next to him. “It’s what we call it, down in the woods, kind of past the Quarry.” 

“I know where the Quarry is,” Mike affirms with a nod. 

“Great!” Stan pipes up, wheeling his bike around next to Ben’s. “You wanna meet us there tomorrow and we’ll take you down?” 

“Yeah, yeah that would be really cool.” Mike says, smiling widely. “Three o’clock?”

“Three o’clock.” Richie confirms, slapping him on the shoulder lightly. “Which way you headed?” He asks, gesturing towards the street in front of them. 

“Back past Witcham and Jones,” Mike says, pointing to the left side of the street. 

“Alright then, let’s get going.” Richie says, starting to mount his bike. 

“What?” Mike questions, confused again, “Don’t you guys live like, on the opposite side of town?”

“Sure, most of us,” Richie shrugs, “But Big Bill here literally lives on Witcham, so, we’ll ride you home.” 

“You don’t have to do that,” Mike murmurs, but the look on his face says he’s grateful. 

“Of course we don’t,” Beverly says, mounting her bike as well, “But we’re going to.” There’s a certain tone in her voice that suggests there isn’t room for argument, so Mike doesn’t bother. She doesn’t say that it’s more about safety than anything because she doesn’t need to. Derry was a small and quiet town, but the people here were...off. Old fashioned and sort of creepy, enough so that Richie assumes that Mike’s parents needing help on the farm wasn’t the only reason they prefered to keep him homeschooled. If the words Henry Bowers and his gang of rats spit out were any indication, Derry High was low tolerance for anyone not straight, white, and even male. And that was just the high school. 

They ride in silence mostly the whole way, because you know, biking and talking. Not even a forte Richie can master. Richie takes notice of Derry as he whizzes in and out of his friends in a curving line. He allows the cool Autumn breeze to blow his hair back and wash over his face. Richie had taken a liking to riding his bike the first time he did it. It’s independant and freeing all in one, while still being something he associates with the sort of child-like nostalgia of riding through town with his four best friends. _Five, now_, he thinks happily to himself as he looks at Mike who is pushing off to his left, head thrown back in laughter as Stanley stands on his pedals and makes bird-calling sounds into the night. He’s really glad he met Mike, and based on how eager his friends had been to invite him to hang out tomorrow, he guesses they’re pretty glad too. 

They get to Mike’s house in about 20 minutes, panting slightly from the exertion. Mike dismounts his bike first, leaning on the handles as the others skid to a stop. They absorb the silence for a minute, the six of them, still a little too out of breath to spark a conversation. Mike smiles a little privately at them, and the rest of the group joins in, the adrenaline from the ride spilling out in weak laughs. 

“That was _ almost _as tiring as doin’ Mrs. Uris, Jesus,” Richie jokes, and Mike lets out a proper wide eyed chuckle. 

“You can’t make a joke about my doing my mom and then say _ Jesus_, Richie,” Stan says, clearly not offended and instead shoving Richie playfully, “That’s like, the definition of anti-semitism.” 

“Anti-A-What?” Richie asks, looking at Stan wildly. 

“You are _ hopeless, _Tozier.” Stan insists. Richie turns back to Mike to see him parking his bike in the driveway they stand in. 

“I should head in, but seriously, thank you guys so much for today. It was the most fun I’ve had in awhile.”

“It’s no sweat, Homeschool,” Richie assures and smiles at him. “You’re pretty cool, y’know?”

Mike smiles at that, and Richie is sure if it wasn’t so dark outside he would see a blush playing on his cheeks. “You guys are pretty cool, too.” 

“We still on for tomorrow?” Ben asks, looking at him hopefully. 

“Of course we are,” Mike says, “3 o’clock?”

“3 o’clock.” Richie confirms. 

\--------------------------

_Fall, 1990 - Fall, 1992_

It takes two blazing summers and two and half school-years for everything around Richie to come crashing down. But before that day comes, halfway through his senior year, everything is pretty damn peachy. Mike Hanlon, unlike the other few people who had migrated towards their group before, aside from Beverly and Ben, had stuck around like gum on the back of the shoe. He was nearly inseparable from the five of them, apart from the hours when they were at school and he in turn was on the farm. They would meet down in the Barrens almost every single day, skipping rocks in the creek that ran through the dirt and sharing things, secrets and stories, cigarettes and bubblegum, comic books and Walkman tapes. They did homework too, Mike excused, but he always lent a helping hand, having been at least a few hundred feet ahead of their school’s slow curriculum in his own personal studies. 

They even build a clubhouse, of sorts. Mostly it had been Ben’s direction with the help of Mike and Bill’s physical labor, but Richie insists that they all helped equally. It’s hidden towards the front of the entrance to the Barrens, built underground with a hatch and a rope on top as the door, covered by leaves and old branches. They used old wood planks and sheets of scrap metal from the junkyard in order to build the walls and hold them up, and threw two king-size sheets (sewn together by Beverly) from the thrift shop which they hammered into the floor that covered the soft dirt ground to create a makeshift carpet. Aside from the four walls and roof, it was pretty much empty. They make a hammock, tying an old blanket around two posts and Ben had built a small wooden plank into one of the walls to form a makeshift bench, but other than that it was far from furnished. Over time, though, they brought and left certain things there. A stash of comic books and novels that they had outgrown, a small gathering of pillows and a few blankets, and Richie and Stan had helped Beverly make cushions for the bench. Stan and Richie buying wool and cheap fabric from the craft store, and watching idly as Beverly got to work, needle and thread in hand and a concentrated furrow in her brow. 

If they weren’t at the Barrens, they were swimming languidly in the lake at the bottom of the Quarry. Playing games like chicken, Richie atop Stan’s shoulders shoving at Bill, wet skin against wet skin. Other times they held contests, ducking under the water to see who could hold their breath the longest, cheeks puffed out and eyes red and watery. Sometimes just lying on their backs, floating atop the water and drinking in the sun. If they weren’t swimming, they were sunbathing on the rocks that overlooked it, Mike’s boom-box playing anything from R&B to Classic Rock, much louder than they had ever been allowed to play it at The Denbroughs', and definitely louder than necessary for the six of them sitting in close quarters. They would sit there together at the top, either in a circle or spread out and sectioned off. Bev and Richie smoking cigarettes near the edge so they could flick their ashes into the deep green of the lake below, while Mike and Ben shared tapes and Stan and Bill read comics or books or magazines. Whichever one of them had remembered to bring that day.

Other times they went to the Aladdin, bothering Mike at work and seeing shows when he got off, fucking around in the arcade, cold air and neon lights, red and gold and sickly sweet. Sometimes they didn’t even go inside, and Mike knew on these days to meet them out front and they would bike around like some sort of possie, tripping around at shops or simply riding around with no destination. They’d bike to one of their houses, sometimes, usually Ben’s, and spend hours watching old films and playing board games. 

Mike’s farm even became a place of frequent visitation, because he had this huge outhouse to the left of it. It looked almost how you would assume a basement to, only above ground. Mike’s parents had fixed it up nearly a year before, so it was finished clean and even had its own two piece bathroom. Together they filled it up, with a few pieces of old furniture from Mike’s house and even more from the garage sale Stanley’s parents had thrown a few months prior. By the end, though they agreed it wasn’t _ really _ever finished, it housed a couch, two comfortable lounge chairs, a small cabinet with Mike’s boom box and a crate of tapes on top, a wrangled old orange and red rug from Bev’s mom, and the shitty old television set Richie’s parents had planned to throw out when they got a new one. It was a piece of shit and gave out more than it turned on, but it still worked. That had been good enough for them. Another place to call their own, meeting grounds and clubhouses and forests that aren’t really forests.

When they aren’t together, which isn’t often but still occurs, Richie spends most of his time at home. He mows his front yard and does the dishes in order to squeeze some money out of his dad, (Wentworth’s words, not Richie’s) or spends time up in his room listening to music. His parents have an extensive and eclectic collection of tapes, ones Ms. D would absolutely despise, and he plays them as loud as he can until his mother’s soft figure comes upstairs to ask him to, “Turn it down, _ please, _Richard. As much as I love Billy Idol, we’re watching the news.” Which he does, slightly, and eventually she just stops asking and in turn busts in, his father in tow, to serenade him. It happened once when Mike and Stan were over, and he had been embarrassed enough to never turn it up the extra five notches again. 

He starts making his own tapes, too, going through albums and writing his favorite songs down on a little notepad he had bought for history class that he hadn’t ended up needing. His dad taught him how, with a ruffle to his hair and a pat on Richie’s shoulder.

In these far apart moments of solidarity, Richie does a little research. It had started at the library when he had gone with Ben, and thankfully _ only _Ben, to look for some off-hand, weird fantasy novel that had just come in which Richie had no interest in but Bill and Ben had been ecstatic for. Ben had wandered off towards the fantasy section while Richie meandered towards a table in the center, not sitting down just yet but resting his arms on the top of it, looking around. 

He had been trying to gauge how many adults were in the library, and if any of them would pay enough attention to him if he snuck out the front door to smoke. His occasional cigarette breaks with Beverley had unfortunately become a more-often-than-not smoke session with just Richie himself _ plus _the occasional break with Bev. He kept telling himself he would quit but, well, no dice. It isn’t like it mattered, though, he and Bev had made a pact that when it had gone on for too long they would quit together and they clearly hadn’t reached that point yet. It’s as he’d been avoiding the gaze of the middle-aged woman by the young adult section that he’d spotted it. 

Off in the corner, tucked away between the biographies and historical-nonfiction shelves, were two medium size bookcases. One was titled, ‘Gay and Lesbian Literature,’ and the other was titled ‘Sexuality: Non-Fiction’. Richie’s breath caught alarmingly in his throat, and he even thinks he may have choked on his own saliva at one point. He remembers staring at those two titles for a while, before eventually staring down at his hands on the table, his face hot. The relaxed posture his hands had once settled in had turned into white-knuckled fists, and he took a steadying breath. He wasn’t even sure what the big fucking _ deal _ had been, other than the overwhelming sense that everyone _ knew, _ suddenly. That those shelves had been placed for Richie Tozier and Richie Tozier only, which was complete and utter bullshit. He knew it was, but the fear he felt, starting at the tip of his head and moving slowly down his fingertips didn’t subside. Richie felt hot and cold all over, goosebumps prickling his arms and his neck even as his face burned. He had stared them down, glaringly, before stomping out of the library with no word to Ben, cigarette pack with a lighter tucked inside ripped out of his pocket and into his hand before the door had even shut. 

Two weeks later, though, he went back. He’d left the clubhouse about an hour earlier than he usually did, spitting some bullshit about a dentist appointment he had to get to before hopping on his bike and riding into town. He passed the library once, and then twice, and then eventually circled the whole thing, breathing in through his nose heavily and tightening his grip on the handles of his bicycle until his hands almost ached. They even cramped up eventually, and only then did he pull towards the front and throw his bike to the side haphazardly. Richie willed himself to stand up straight, shoulders squared and head held high as he marched toward the door of the entrance, feigning confidence. Feigning strength. Feigning bravery. As he got closer though, it felt as though the building grew taller, until suddenly the library was no longer a building and instead it was a monster, sharp teeth and claws, beckoning him inside. When he pulled open the door, his shoulders were slumped, his head hanging low and his steps weak and stumbling. He couldn’t pretend he was confident when the only person he was trying to convince was himself. Richie had never been brave.

He wasn’t even sure what his plan _ was, _because he sure as hell wasn’t going to check any of those books out, and the idea that someone could see him, lingering in that section, was nearly enough to make him turn around and go back home. He’d opened the door though, and for some reason he couldn’t shake the feeling that turning around now would be just as obvious as checking a book out, so he doesn’t. The building seems to swallow him whole as he walks in and as he hears the doors shut behind him, it sounds a little too much like a gulp.

Richie lets his eyes scan the entire building before he’s even out of the doorway. It’s nearly empty, and he mentally slaps himself at the fact that he thought it wouldn’t be. It was a chilly Tuesday evening in the middle of October. He isn’t really sure what he'd expected. The librarian is there, obviously, but she’s stationed at her desk, eyes cast downward at some gigantic book Richie had probably never heard of in his life. She doesn’t even make eye contact with him when she raises her head a little as he walks in, a sort of greeting gesture, before burrowing herself back into the book. He doesn’t return it. There is one man, middle-aged and grey all over, sitting at the window near the kids area with a little girl hanging on his leg, presumably his daughter. Richie eyes them for a second, but the man’s eyes are perpetually trained out the window and the little girl’s on her book so he doesn’t worry too much. People are like that here, shells of human beings too lost inside their own heads to take notice of anyone else around them. Silently, he wishes the little girl luck. 

Richie makes his way towards the back of the library quickly, shifting his gaze back and forth and back again to make sure no one is watching him as he approaches the two shelves hidden in the corner. He avoids the one titled ‘Gay and Lesbian Literature’ entirely, instead approaching the latter. He tucks himself in between the two shelvings, doing his best to make himself appear as invisible as humanly possible. He wonders, briefly, if this would be enough. Just standing in this section, hands stuffed in his pockets, for once in his life completely still. Richie stares at the shelf, a myriad of colors, a myriad of words and descriptions, and feels a little ill. He reaches his hand out and leaves it about half an inch away from the second shelf in the stack, tracing his fingers over the air in front of the books. The entire case is full, but it’s only about five shelves tall, and the books there range everywhere from new to old. Some of them don’t even have titles on their spines, instead left blank like their insisting on Richie to pick one up. He doesn’t. 

Instead he eyes them ever so warily, letting his hand fall away to his side as he stares at one of the books a little towards the end of the left side of the shelf. Subconsciously, he begins to slide his backpack off of his right shoulder (Although, looking back on it, it was probably a little more consciously than he’d like to admit) as he continues to look at the book. It was one of them that didn’t have anything printed visibly from where he could see it, but it appeared to be a little more subdued, as opposed to the glaring red, navy, and even black covers, this one had been a muted mint green. Standing taller than most of the others on the shelf but thinner in width, tearing at the seams just a bit which made it appear used. It was a nearly comforting thought, for Richie, the idea that someone else, maybe someone a lot like him, a _ few _someones a lot like him, had picked this one out for the same reason. 

He breaks his almost hypnotic focus on the book to look around him once again. The man and his daughter are gone, but the librarian is still stationed at her desk from what Richie can see. He can’t see far enough to check if she’s still got her head tipped down into the novel about history or serial killers or the Librarian’s Guide for a Happy life or some shit, but at least they aren’t laser focused on him as his own eyes had been on the shelf. 

He doesn’t take the book out from the shelf, until he does. Richie unzips his backpack quickly, barely even looking down and his left hand immediately reaches for the mint green cover, snatching it quickly and shoving it inside his bag without even looking away from the librarian. He nearly fumbles and drops his backpack onto the floor, but he doesn’t, and without a glance at the cover his backpack is zipped up again and tugged back onto his shoulder. Richie allows himself to breathe heavily for a moment, eyes wide and cheeks a little flushed with adrenaline and something like humiliation. 

This hadn’t been the first time he had stolen, no, countless trips with Bev down to the pharmacy to snatch cigarettes while she batted eyelashes at the creeps behind the counter stood in place for that. This however, had been the first time he had taken anything like _ this, _something so terrifyingly personal and something that he had taken not because he couldn’t legally walk out with it, but instead because he wouldn't dare be caught letting anyone know why he wanted it. He misses his friends, suddenly and overwhelmingly, because he feels too grown up and too tired and too different. This was stupid, the way he was being forced to be someone he didn’t want to be, the way he was forced to separate himself from them yet again, stupid how he had no one to blame for it, either, aside from himself. Another piece of him missing but nothing to trade it with, nothing replaced by one of his friends and instead lying on the floor of the library. Maybe that was okay, maybe he didn’t need that piece of himself anyway, but he yearns for it. Wants to trade the piece of him that needs this book with the piece of him lost trying to get it. 

He rushes out of the library nearly astonishingly similarly to the way he had the last time, head tipped down and eyes trained on his feet, his hand a white knuckled grip around his backpack strap and the other fisted by his side. The librarian bids him a distant farewell which he also doesn’t return this time around, and he shoves the door open with such force that it nearly smacks the wall next to it. 

The cool breeze is a welcoming change to what had become a suffocating heat inside, and he lets it cascade his reddening cheeks while he mounts his bike. As he takes one last look at the building, he has one final, startling thought: the library had not been a monster, with gaping teeth and hot sour breath and something that could swallow him whole, no. The real monster, was a stolen book tucked away inside his bookbag, which probably held nothing but definitions and maybe a few sentences he wouldn’t be able to understand, but felt like it held every single answer to every single question he had ever had and the ability to make him spill his guts and his worst yet best-kept secret onto the cold pavement of Derry, Maine, which had been the only other monster he had ever been afraid of. 

At home, he takes the book out immediately but instead of opening it up he shoves it under his bed. It takes him three weeks to pull it out from under there and instead shove it in his bedside drawer, another two weeks before he then takes it out and sets it on his bed in front of him one lonely friday night, and nearly a month of repeating this process until he actually opens the damn thing, but he does. He _ does. _And that has got to count for something. 

\--------------------------

_Spring, 1992_

Two years after he met Mike Hanlon and one year after he stole the book, Richie Toziers' life pretty much falls apart. He’s probably being dramatic, and granted after everything happens Richie would think back on it as one of the luckiest days of his life, but right now it feels like the end of the damn world. 

A few months, almost half of an entire year before Richie walked into his sixth period calculus class on February 8th, nearly six months into the school year and when the entire world shifted on its axis, he makes yet another discovery. 

There was a word for how he felt, a word to define and categorize what he thought was one of the worst things about him. It’s _ Queer_, and he guesses it’s probably less of a _ word _ and more of a _ sexual orientation, _but that description still makes him feel a little squirmy. The definition of Queer, as it read in ‘The Ins, Outs and In-Betweens of Sexual Orientation’ (the novel his hands had snatched up from the library what felt like 100 years ago,) is as follows: “Denoting or relating to a sexual or gender identity that does not correspond to established ideas of sexuality or gender, especially heterosexual norms .” 

He had been wrong, before, about the word. It was so often used as an insult, a term to define boys who liked boys and less often girls who liked girls. No buts, ifs or ands about it. If you were queer, you were gay, and more often than not pummeled somewhere close to death by those in this town who thought that was unacceptable. That wasn’t the case, though. Or - it was, in terms of insults and attacks but not in the sense that it meant he was just _ gay. _ And maybe he was, but he wasn’t half queer, because that wasn’t a thing. There was a word for that, _ bisexuality, _but reading the definition of it hadn’t felt like him. Not in the way that this did. 

Queer meant that at least for right now, Richie didn’t have to squeeze himself into a box that didn’t fit him. It meant that he could like who he liked, love who he loved, and that’s all he was really looking for anyway. Acknowledgement that this wasn’t crazy, that he wasn’t crazy, that at seventeen he could look at himself and say; “I don’t have to be anything except myself,” and that. That had been comforting. Terrifying and elusive and too honest for his liking, but comforting all the same. 

Richie had read that line, amongst others when he had arrived at them, more than ten times over in his head. And when he wasn’t reading it, it was almost on a constant loop whether he was at home, or at school, or out to dinner with his parents. Really at any point where he wasn’t surrounded or distracted by his friends, there it was. _ Denoting or relating to a sexual or gender identity that does not correspond to established ideas of sexuality or gender, especially heterosexual norms. _

If he was being honest, he’d had a little bit of trouble understanding what the fuck it was they had been trying say, but after rereading it a few times over along with the brief two page synopsis of _ being _ queer, he had gotten the gist. It meant that you, and in turn, he, fell under the spectrum of those who had no ideology for labels. He could like men, women, and probably something in between or neither, too, and although he hasn’t even gotten to that section of the book yet he isn’t sure he would be able to grasp it. Not that he doesn’t think that a person could decide they didn’t file under a gender that _ wasn’t _ male or female, after all that had been part of the definition as well, hadn’t it? But right after his very literal sexual awakening it wasn’t something he was going to stress himself out to completely understand. Richie was smart, undoubtedly so, but what _ was _ it with the language people used in these books? Big words and long sentences for explanations that could be squashed down into a simple phrase like, _ Hey man, some people like dudes, some like chicks, and others like all of it. _ And he could've left it at that, _ accepted _it like that, probably with a grain of salt and some doubt, but at least it wouldn't have taken him two weeks to even understand. 

Richie had understood it, though, and the first thing he had done after dropping the book back down onto his messily made bed as if he had been burned was get up and look in the mirror. He stared at himself for a brief moment, at his pale face tinged just a bit pink, be it adrenaline or vulnerability, his brown eyes, already magnified behind his lenses even wider now, the way his chest had been heaving ever so slightly, and repeated the words to himself once again: _ Denoting or relating to a sexual or gender identity that does not correspond to established ideas of sexuality or gender, especially heterosexual norms. _

It had felt all at once relieving and crushing, and even though he had only whispered it aloud he shoved his hands over his mouth like he had screamed it, like he was trying to shove the words back in. It wouldn’t matter, though, because regardless out of his mouth or inside his brain he was still queer. He still liked boys, and girls too, maybe, though the latter wasn’t something that could very well get him killed. Richie looked at himself for a moment longer, trying desperately to recognize the boy in the mirror before scrambling back to his bed and abruptly shutting off the light, turning over into his covers and feigning sleep in case his mom or dad came in, even though it had only been 9:00pm and the last time Richie had gone to bed at that hour he had been eleven years old. 

\--------------------------

_Winter, 1993_

It got easier over time though, as all things did, and pretty soon he was proudly queer, (to himself, and sort of to Ben although Richie hasn’t like, walked up to him and said; "_Hey man! Remember that thing I told you in secret over two years ago that we never spoke of again? Well guess what! It has a name!” _Because fuck that.) Richie figures that by the time he feels like telling Ben, it’s high time he tells the rest of his friends too. He doesn’t think they’ll have a problem with it, not necessarily, but life is full of what-ifs, and the idea of being outcasted more than he already was by a group of people he loved the most pretty much scared him shitless. 

Which is why when Richie walks into calculus surprisingly early after lunch and nearly rams face first into one of the cutest boys he’s ever seen in his life, he’s pretty sure he’s fucked. Like, ultimately and eternally fucked. 

The boy is shorter than him, but not by much, and his hair is wavy and chestnut brown where it curls around his ears. His skin is pale, but unlike Richie’s which kind of looks like he hasn’t ever seen the sun, it’s slightly tanner, and his _ eyes. _ Holy shit, they’re probably the biggest brown eyes he’s ever seen in his life. They’re round and framed by unnaturally long eyelashes, and his nose is small and pointy and deckled with freckles, and his lips are pink and sort of pouty and _ yikes. _ Richie is staring, and he has been, not for an extremely long time or anything but long enough to where the normal amount of time to say fucking _ anything _ has passed and Richie had been staring at his _ lips. _ Like the goddamn disaster he was. Richie meets his eyes, and he can feel just how red his face is and the way his mouth had sort of dropped into an ‘o’. Richie snaps it shut, settling for an all but suave smile that probably looked a little more insane than it did comfortable. The kid smiles back at him though, eyes crinkling and pearly white teeth jutting out and _ shit, _did Richie mention that he was fucked? 

“Hey,” 

“Hi,” Richie stumbles, “Sorry ‘bout that. I was just - really excited about… getting to my seat?” The boy laughs at that, a quick sputter of giggles before he sort of clamps his mouth shut and nods. 

“Understandable, I was standing right in the doorway anyway, so, probably just as much my fault as it was yours.” He says, glancing around a little awkwardly. 

“All’s fair, then,” Richie says with a shrug, starting to maneuver around him to get to his seat so he can have his break down in _ peace, _thank you very much, but he’s interrupted when the boy says

“My name is Eddie, by the way,” And he extends his hand out to shake Richie’s, like he’s a forty year old man, or something. “Eddie Kaspbrak.” 

Richie takes his hand anyway though, shaking it with enough force that the kid, _ Eddie, _glances down a little quizzically. “Richie,” he answers instead of letting go, “Richie Tozier.”

Eddie nods and slips his hand out of Richie’s grasp with a slight smile. “Well, it was a pleasure running into you, Richie Tozier. Literally, I might add.”

Richie chuckles at that, nodding slightly. “You too, Eddie Kaspbrak, you too.” Richie says and tips an invisible hat at him. Richie walks backwards before doing what was supposed to be a clean sort of pivot and instead lead to him nearly falling on his face as he trips over his own shoelace. Richie catches his balance as he hears a quick snort from Eddie, and Richie curves his head to narrow his eyes good naturedly, but he’s nearly grinning and he gives Eddie a thumbs up. 

“And tie your shoes!” 

\--------------------------

Shit really hits the fan about three days later. Richie found himself floundering after that first interaction with Eddie. He notices he’s definitely coming across as less of a sly jokester and more of a blushing idiot, but for right now he’s keen to blame that on the fact that he doesn’t really know Eddie, having spent pretty much his entire high school experience with the same close knit group of friends who knew him as well as they knew the backs of their hands, the water at the Quarry, the winding streets of downtown. Still, that doesn’t stop him from grinning widely at Eddie when he walks into class, and sparking up conversations with him whenever he can. That surprises him, a little bit, because he doesn’t talk to people often. Well - that isn’t necessarily true, Richie sort of talks to everyone, but this isn’t the same. Richie talks when he’s talked to. He doesn’t spark conversations, or do his best to make someone laugh, or look forward to speaking to _ anyone _outside of his friend group. Not until Eddie. Which sounds so hung up and cliche that he almost hates himself for thinking it. 

Eddie Kaspbrak was a transfer student from New York City, the exotic NYC, the Big Apple, if you will, and he had moved to the piece-of-shit, middle-of-nowhere Derry, Maine because his mom got fired and thought the ‘air was better,’ down here, or whatever the hell that means. Richie had wanted point out that there was no way in _ hell _anything was better in Derry, much less the air, but he didn’t because he hadn’t wanted to scare him off. That wasn’t his job, anyway. Derry could do that all on its own.

They hadn’t really hung out, so to speak, they just chatted in class because their seats were near each other and their teacher, Mr. Watson, was actually pretty cool and didn’t really give a fuck what went down in class as long as your work got done. So they talked, in between problems on the board and over a few heads, sure, but they talked. Eddie was funny, in a surprising way and much less of a constant one, kind of like Stan. They’d be chatting about nothing in particular, and some sort of innuendo or offhand joke would spill out of Richie’s mouth and before he had a chance to push it back in Eddie was countering; either with one of his own or some version of, “_Shut the hell up, Richie, what are you even talking about?” _(Which may have stung a little bit if Eddie didn’t chuckle the whole way through it.) And it would push a sharp laugh out of Richie, probably a little too loud judging by the glances he would get from his classmates, but the bubbling feeling in his chest was enough that he found he didn’t really care. 

They haven’t spent time together outside of class though, partly because it’s only been a few days and partly because Richie finds himself feeling sort of shy, which is like the complete fucking opposite of how he’s ever felt before in terms of making friends. He’s full up of blushing cheeks and stuttering sentences and jokes that trail off into nothing because he gets distracted. By stupid shit, like Eddie’s smile or his laugh or the way he crosses his ankles when he sits. So he wants to keep Eddie to himself for awhile, sue him, it’s rare that he finds someone he likes well enough to the point where he feels as though his other friends would too. It’s also probably because Eddie is new, and attractive, and nice, and he’s pretty damn sure Ben’s all-knowing glances would actually be spot on with this one. 

Richie had been meaning to invite Eddie to eat lunch with him and his friends the next day for about three days straight now, but once the bell rings and he’s decided he’s going to ask all that he can wrangle out is a stumbled, "Bye Eddie!" before he is worming his way out of the door and onto his last class. 

Which is exactly what he had been doing today, _ again, _ but because the universe seems to be consistently deciding to both fuck with him _ and _make his life easier, he’s stopped halfway through the door by the voice of his teacher.

“Mr. Tozier, a word?” 

Richie pretty much stops dead in his tracks, eyes widening comically behind his glasses as he scans the room, making eye contact with Eddie who was still at his desk, calmly packing his backpack in a way that definitely did not mirror Richie’s hectic form of _ stuffing. _ Eddie’s face however _ did _ mirror Richie’s, a shocked little expression only dimmed by the way the corners of his mouth turned up slightly and how he mouthed a silent little; ‘_Oh shit,’ _

Richie fought the urge to flip him off as he made his way towards Mr. Watson’s desk. He feels as though he’s moving in slow motion as he steps towards him, rattling off what he could have possibly done wrong in his head. Contrary to popular belief, Richie _ was _a good student. He got pretty much straight A’s in all of his classes, and aside from the fact that he was buzzy and loud and often talked too much, his teachers rather liked him. He hadn’t cheated on a test, he certainly hadn’t forgotten to turn in any homework, the only relatively new thing was Eddie. At that thought he turns his head to Eddie’s desk, and in turn Eddie, who was standing at his own desk still, waiting for him. Eddie, who gives him a little shrug, before shifting his eye contact to stare at his table instead of meeting Richie’s gaze. 

“What’s shakin', Mr. W?” Richie asks, going for nonchalant but judging by the way his voice sort of cuts off and the way he’s wringing his hands he doubts it was very convincing. Mr. Watson smiles at him brightly though, so that eases his nerves at bit. 

“Edward, why don’t you come up here too?” He asks, turning his attention from Richie to Eddie. Eddie’s eyes widen even further and he nods, looking a little embarrassed at the use of his full name but he walks over anyway. He stakes his place right next to Richie, undoubtedly looking a little nervous too. “Relax, no one is in trouble,” Mr. Watson starts, and at that Richie defleates, but Eddie - Eddie still looks wound up, which is odd. “And I’ll give you two a pass so you aren’t late, don’t worry.” He continues, giving Eddie a pointed little glance to which Eddie’s shoulders move down from his ears, at least a bit. 

“So, what did you need us for?” Eddie asks, straight to the point as always. 

“Well, as you know, midterms are coming up now, in about a month or so, in fact, and since Eddie is new and you are my best student,” Mr. Watson says, and Richie looks down at his shoes bashfully, shrugging his shoulders. 

“I don’t know about that-”

“Don’t be humble now, Richie,” Mr. Watson cracks, and Richie looks up again to see Eddie looking at him, his eyes sort of surprised but pleased little smile on his face that brings one of Richie’s own up to his cheeks almost subconsciously. “You’ve got the highest score in this class, which isn’t easy I might add. Anyway, as I was saying.” Mr. Watson addresses Eddie now, “You’re a new student here, and although you are doing great in this class so far I think if Richie were to tutor you, at least for the next couple of weeks before exams, you would pass with flying colors.” Mr. Watson glances between them for any uncertainty, but Richie’s brain is moving too damn fast to even begin to decipher what expression he’s wearing right now. “It would only be a few days a week for however long you see fit, and I have already cleared it with the librarian that you two would have your own space. Think of this as a way to make you feel a bit more comfortable with the material, Eddie.” 

“Yeah, yeah I guess it couldn’t hurt,” Eddie says, though he still looks a little unsure, glancing between Richie and Mr. Watson nervously. 

“Of course, assuming this is alright with you, Mr. Tozier?” Mr. Watson asks.

“Oh, sure!” Richie says, albeit too quickly, “I can help little Eddie, no problem.” Mr. Watson smiles brightly at them, nodding his head and clapping his hands together once. 

“Fantastic! Alright, well, why don’t we have you two study in the library Monday, Wednesday, and Friday’s if you feel so inclined. I don’t want to take away from your weekends if Eddie doesn’t need too much extra help. Sound good?” 

“Sounds great, sir,” Eddie says, and Richie nods back at him. 

“Great, great, so I’ll just write up your passes and you are both free to go. Thanks boys.” He says as he pulls two slips of paper out and begins signing off on them. 

They walk together once they get out of the room, because now that Richie isn’t awkwardly tripping over his own feet to book it out of class after stumbling out some rendition of goodbye, he realizes that they’re last periods are actually in the same passage. 

They curve around the hallway slowly, Richie jostling Eddie with his shoulder occasionally and receiving a half scoff half chuckle along with a shove back in return. Richie smiles down at his feet, both anxious and grateful for the extra time Mr. Watson had bestowed on him to hang out with Eddie. It’s weird, the way Richie gravitates toward him, how they gravitate toward each other. He’s only known Eddie a few days, almost a week, but it already feels easy and comfortable, like they’ve been friends for much longer. 

Richie should probably be a little worried about how quickly his small infatuation with the way Eddie moves and laughs and speaks is growing rapidly, but he can’t bring himself to care. He _ likes _the way Eddie makes him laugh, he likes the blush that daunts Eddie’s cheeks when Richie spews bullshit probably too inappropriate for a math class, he likes how well they play off of each other. Most of all, he likes the way he feels. Light and airy and giddy, and even though he feels that way around all of the Losers, it had taken time. Eddie feels easy, like an old time friend that you reunite with and it’s like no time has passed at all. 

Richie can hear Eddie’s footsteps slowing, so he cuts is inner monologue off in favor of meeting his eyes. They slow down to a stop in front of Eddie’s class, Richie’s just a few doors down the hall. 

“Well,” Eddie says, just as Richie opens his mouth to say;

“So-” They cut each other off, and Eddie lets out a snort as he shakes his head. Richie smiles, “Go ahead,”

“I just wanted to thank you, you know, for agreeing to tutor me. I’m not like, lost but-” He stumbles, shrugging his shoulders, “It couldn’t hurt.” 

“No worries, for real,” Richie says with a nod. “It isn’t like I have anything better to be doing.” Eddie rolls his eyes at that, clearly not believing him even though it's entirely true. If it wasn’t for their little arrangement, Richie would probably be smoking in the Barrens with Bev or chilling in the clubhouse. It’s probably a little odd that the idea of doing _ more _calculus is more appealing than doing literally nothing, but fuck it. If he were here to psychoanalyze himself, there are a lot more pressing issues when it comes to the brain of Richie Tozier. 

“And you?” Eddie asks.

“Hm?”

“You were gonna say something?”

“Oh! Yeah,” Richie falters, “Sorry, I was just - I was gonna ask if you wanted to eat lunch with my friends and I tomorrow?”

“You have friends?” Eddie questions without missing a beat, making Richie laugh.

“Oh fuck you, I’m like, really cool.” 

“Sure you are,” 

“You know what? Fine, Mr. Meany-Pants,” Richie says sarcastically, acting like he’s going to walk off, “Forget I asked!” 

“No, no!” Eddie laughs, tugging on his arm, “I’m fucking with you. Yeah, I’d like that a lot,” Richie smiles brightly at him, minutely glancing down to where Eddie still has his hand wrapped around Richie’s wrist. If Eddie notices him looking, he doesn’t pull away. 

“Okay cool, we eat at like, the very back of the lunch room. There’s only five of us, but everyone leaves us alone for the most part.” 

“Alright, I’ll try and find you guys,” Eddie replies with a small smile. 

“Or I could walk with you?” Richie offers, “What’s your class before lunch?” 

“History, room 107. You don’t have to do that, though-”

“Nah, I don’t mind Eds.” 

“Eds?” Eddie asks, eyebrows raised and a smirk playing on his lips, “Didn’t know we were close enough for nicknames, Tozier.” Richie shrugs, he hadn’t even really meant to say it, slip of the tongue and all that, but he likes it. It fits. Short and blunt and to the point.

“Well we are, although,” Richie trails off, doing his best to look bored. “If we’re doing the nickname thing, you have got to be more creative than my last name.” 

“Yeah, well, we can’t all be geniuses like you,” Eddie says with a slight shrug, removing his hand off Richie’s arm so nonchalantly that Richie kind of wants to scream, because although it had been one of the first times Eddie had ever touched him he kind of didn’t want it to end. He shoves it down though, instead grinning at Eddie with something that probably looks closer to a grimace. 

“It _ is _ hard being as smart and gorgeous as me, Eds, beauty _ and _brains. I’m the whole package,” Richie rambles, 

“Yeah, I bet you’d like to think so,” Eddie jokes back, and sighs kind of dejectedly while looking towards his classroom door. “Well, I better-” He cuts himself off with a gesture towards it. Richie nods, stuffing his hands into his pockets. 

“Yeah, me too. I’ll see you tomorrow?” 

“Tomorrow.”

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay... so how are we feeling? tired? strung along? i am So sorry. anyway, think of it like this: you're over the hump! everything you read from here on out will be so reddiecentric you'll beg me for a break. okay, thank you so much for reading! feel free but not inclined to leave me comments and kudos and the like, they make me very happy. i'm on twitter! more than anything else! you can find me on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/ridtheblues) as im there 90% of my time. so come and say hi, be my friend, badger me into writing, yada yada yada.


	2. chapter two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We could pull it apart, spend our whole lives pulling it apart and have no time left to do anything smart with the pieces. The wrong things have been wired together. Things that you shouldn't touch. The sooner you embrace, it the sooner it will leave you."  
\- Glue, Richard Siken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... hello again... you remember how i said this was most likely only going to be two chapters? that was a Lie. this one isn't as long as the first so i am sorry for that, but it is alllll reddie baby!! mostly this is getting split up because i really wanted this updated before the end of the week, so once again a lot of chapter three is already written. i don't have as much to say this time around, but i hope you enjoy this. it is three am and i am exhausted, frankly, but i want to thank you for the reaction on chapter one. your comments and kudos mean more to me than you know

_Winter, 1993_

Eddie, just as Richie had assumed he would, fit himself into their group with surprising ease. He had been a little shy at first, but Richie couldn’t blame him for that. Losers or not, getting thrust into a group of five close friends with a constant mention of a sixth was bound to be intimidating. Still, Eddie had adjusted kind of scarily quickly, taking an unfortunate liking to the little quips the group had built against Richie - Trashmouth and Beep Beep among them, and firing at Richie just because he could. Richie would be lying if he said it wasn’t super fucking endearing though. He's sure _that_ was painted all over his expression, based on the knowing glint in Ben’s eye, and although Richie had been preparing for that it still managed to hit him with a dizzying sort of anxiety that he was being too obvious. But no one else had caught on yet, not even _ Stan, _so he figured he was probably safe. Safe enough at least to avoid Ben’s eye and pretend like he didn’t have a single idea what he was getting at. 

And for the most part, he didn’t. Richie doesn’t even have a crush on Eddie. Or - he doesn’t think he does. Sure, Eddie was sweet and funny and nice and undoubtedly fucking cute, but Richie hasn’t had a crush yet, and he will be absolutely damned if he develops one on the new kid who may or may not be one of his new best friends. Not to mention the probability of Eddie being gay, much less into _ Richie_, of all people, is like - well, this isn’t Richie’s forte, but it's fucking _ low. _Like barely there, not even possible kind of low, which sucks, but at the same time Richie can’t find himself being too surprised. He didn’t think he had much - comparatively - to the rest of them. A knack for curse words and tugging on his hair. Big glasses and big eyes and a big heart, sure, but not big enough for anything that matters. Whatever, he can handle it. A stupid not-crush and the waning feeling inside his chest because for the first time he feels like he actually wants - something. A person to call his own, or whatever, but he can handle it. He’s waited this long. He might as well just continue on waiting like he has been, until he’s 18 and can move to San Francisco or Los Angeles or maybe even New York, and meet some guy who is undoubtedly gay, or a girl who is really accepting - though the latter felt less and less appealing as time goes on - and move from there. Another year and a half won’t kill him. 

The only real issue being that Richie had sort of been forced into a rather uncomfortable position. Which was only made shittier by the fact that he was excited about it. _ It _ being how Richie was going to have to spend a lot of time with Eddie and only Eddie for at least the next month. Which was great when he thought about it simply, fucking around with him for at least an hour for two to three days a week in the library, learning more about him and his quirks and the things that made him laugh. It all sounded very fine in theory, until it hit him that it would just be them, in close quarters bent over notebooks with lingering glances and blushes on his part, coupled with the fact that Eddie had grown increasingly _ touchy _since the day they learned they were going to have to do this. It probably wasn’t obvious to anyone but Richie, but that certainly wasn’t doing him any favors. 

It wasn’t like Eddie held his hand or leant his head on Richie’s shoulder or anything like that, but it was still there. It was there in the way that Eddie shoved Richie when he made a stupid joke, but his hand lingered for longer than it had to. It was in the way Eddie’s fingers trailed over his own whenever he was handing something to him. It was in the way Eddie’s hand wrapped around his wrist when he tugged him off to calculus and didn’t let go even when Richie began to follow him. All of that, was enough to drive Richie sort of batshit. 

\--------------------------

_Winter, 1993_

The first time they see each other outside of school is that weekend, because Bev had invited Eddie to their weekly Quarry trip, and Richie decides then that even if he _ doesn’t _ have a crush, he’s still sort of fucked. It wasn’t like he’d never seen a shirtless boy before in his life, quite the opposite, seeing as though his friend group consisted mainly _ of _boys. And it had happened then, too, when he was just figuring it all out. Suddenly hyper aware of the way Mike’s shoulders flexed and the way that the sun shone on Stan’s wet skin, but this felt different. Eddie was short, but lengthy, somehow, his torso and back long and freckled and tan compared to Richie’s. Richie is sure he had blushed fiercely at him when Eddie had taken off his t-shirt with a careful precision, and even though he did his best to avert his eyes literally _ anywhere _else, it’s like they had a mind of their own. Flicking back and forth between the murky green of the water at the bottom of the Quarry and Eddie’s bare shoulders constantly. 

All in all it had left Richie quiet and red, which was so far from his usual confident banter that he cringed inwardly at himself for being so disconcerting. Eddie didn’t notice, because Richie finds himself also stumbling, also beet red, also quiet, whenever he’s around him. Which was fine in the sense that to Eddie, Richie appeared normal and not fine in the sense that Richie had a sort of appearance he’d like to keep up and that had been thrown out the window. Masks for Adults, masks for new friends, masks for crushes or not crushes on spitfire boys with freckles and curly hair.

Stan had noticed, because of course he had, and watched Richie with focused brow before saying “You’re being weird,” 

“I’m always weird,” Richie said with a shrug, wrapping his arms around his toro, pulling at the dry patch of skin on his elbow. 

“Weirder than usual, then,” Stan replied, raising his eyebrows at Richie’s posture. 

“Fuck off, Stanny,” Richie said, good natured eyeroll and arms fumbling for a more relaxed position because _ how did standing work? _

“Defensive_ too, _ huh? Wow, you are really not helping your case here,” Stan said, and because Richie was not being weird and he was in fact completely fine, he didn’t reply and instead took his glasses off and speed-walked, _ calmly, _to the edge of the cliff, cannonballing into the wake. 

He stayed under the water for longer than necessary, probably, surrounding himself in brown-green water and dirt. Opening his eyes and trying to make out how many fingers he held up in front of his face. Blue light and pale skin, dust-heavy water and pale skin. Same shit on a different day. Richie shoots himself up once his lungs start screaming, heart beating heavily in his ears and chest constricting uncomfortably. Once he had blinked the water out of his eyes, he looked up to where his friends were still standing on the edge. Bill and Mike not even phased, blinking at him slowly before continuing on with their conversation, Stan smirking at him all too fucking knowingly, Bev laughing around a cigarette, Ben looking between the two of them like he wanted to be in on the joke, and Eddie - Eddie was staring. Eyes wide and mouth dropped open, eyebrows furrowed in a way Richie hadn’t seen crumple his face yet.

“What the _ fuck._” Eddie said, looking between his friends like they were crazy before looking at Richie again like he was even _ crazier. _ “You guys _ swim _in that shit?” 

“I mean, when it’s summer and actually warm enough to, yeah we do,” Beverly said with a shrug, “But Richie is actually clinically insane, so he swims year round.” Which was bullshit, not the insane part or the swimming year round thing, those were mainly true, but even though it was February and should be cold, today was nice. There was still that crisp breeze that came along with it being early Spring, but the sun was out, basking the quarry in warm light. 

“What do you _ mean _ ‘warm enough to swim’?” Richie asked, “It is warm enough! You guys are in your swimming clothes!”

“That doesn’t mean we were getting in, Rich,” Mike laughed, gesturing to their set up of comic books and Walkman tapes. 

“Fuck you guys, it’s your loss,” Richie called, swimming languidly backwards. “The water likes me better, anyway. It told me.”

“Okay, let me repeat myself,” Eddie started, looking around incredulously, “You guys mean to tell me you _ swim _in that?” 

“Yeah?” Ben asked, confused. 

“That is so fucking disgusting, are you serious?” Eddie did some weird aggressive waves with his hand, “Do you even _ know _what’s in there?”

“Do you?” Bill laughed. 

“No! Which is why I won’t step foot in it, what the fuck? It’s like you guys _ want _ some weird flesh eating disease, or leeches - fucking _ leeches, _and you should know that it is absolutely possible to contact Malaria from dirty ass water, especially in the cold, and-”

“Eds!” Richie yelled up, laughing high pitched and giddy, “Dude, _ unclench, _you are literally about to blow a brain vessel.”

“It’s a _ blood _vessel, you absolute disaster,” Eddie said, looking mildly offended. And Richie knew that, of course he did, had taken anatomy the year before. But it was worth it to watch Eddie’s eyes search his for a moment, sputtering until he came up with a reply.

“Whatever,” Richie said with a wave of his hand, “Listen, I’ve been swimming in this water for basically my whole life-”

“Sixth grade was not the start of your life,” Stan interrupted nonchalantly.

“And nothing has ever happened to me, it’s fine,” Richie said, talking over him. 

“That’s because your like, some sort of demon spawn, you don’t count,” Eddie called down to him, making Richie laugh into his hands. 

“Sure, okay, whatever you say.” 

“Whatever I say?” Eddie asked, something merciless showing behind his eyes.

“Huh?” Richie asked, literate as ever.

“You’ll do whatever I say?”

“Um,” Richie said, glancing between Eddie and his friends, who had stopped paying attention as soon as Eddie’s rant had started. “I mean, that isn’t really what the expression means, but - what? What do you want?” Eddie stared at him for a minute, eyes shining and searching and Richie’s heartbeat hastened, his breath slowing down. Eddie’s eyes, brown and wide and deep. Shoulders and freckles and quick sentences that made Richie feel sort of out of touch. 

“Get out, then.” Eddie said, smirk tumbling into a laugh. 

“Fuck you, man,”

“C’mon Rich, you said! Get out of there,” Eddie said, still fucking laughing. 

Richie groaned helplessly into his hands, sinking himself slowly down into the water. He felt - torn up. Kind of. A little stupid and a little confused and little too much like someone was playing a game on him. He thought, sometimes, that maybe Eddie knew. Knew that Richie stared at him too much, thought about him too much. He thought that maybe, for Eddie, it was exciting. To watch a dumb, flimsy mess of a teenage boy flounder after him, chase him and circle him and try to make him grin. That was stupid, Richie knew that, to assume Eddie paid enough attention or the same amount of attention to him. Both thoughts hurt, in different ways. The idea that Eddie cared enough to fuck with him or that he didn’t care at all. Maybe it was neither. Realistically, it was. Eddie was a friend, and you don’t play cruel jokes on friends and you don’t ignore them, and that was. That was better, Richie could do friends. He had done friends, better than anyone he knew. All he had to do was get passed the stupid shit and he could be as close and comfortable with Eddie as he was with Bill. No lingering touches or glances or deep aches in his chest.

Richie swims for awhile longer, and Eddie watches from the top of the cliff, bare feet against brown rock. His expression changes as time goes on, from pinched and worried to soft and relaxed. All eye rolls and grins and middle fingers when Richie says something to make him do so. He does get out, though, and if it was a few hours earlier than he would’ve without Eddie there, no one said anything.

\--------------------------

_Winter, 1993_

Time passes quickly after that, as it always does, and suddenly they’re taking Eddie to the clubhouse down in the Barrens for the first time. Eddie and Richie decided to put studying off till the following week in the name of ‘getting to know each other better,’ before being stuck one on one three days a week for over an hour. Mr. Watson had lamented easily enough, but even Richie could see that he knew they didn’t really need it. They had gotten on alarmingly well from the first time they had met. 

That didn’t matter much though, because a week without tutoring was a week without tutoring and there wasn’t any reason to dwell on it - which is why they found themselves and their other honorary five friends stumbling down the dirt path that lead to the clubhouse.

Eddie, as Richie has come to gather, is a bit skittish and a lot hyperactive, at least when it came to definitions of rare diseases that Richie isn’t even sure really exist and first aid tactics that _ do _ come in handy. Some of them, at least, like how to clean a cut properly or set a sprained ankle but not like, how to amputate a leg if circulation has been cut off for too long, because _ what? _

Either way, Richie thinks that by now he should be used to All Things Eddie, or, alternatively and more likely, Most Things Eddie. Things like Eddie’s loud tangents on Safety First and the way he cuts through the air with his hands while he talks and the way his eyebrows furrow sometimes and his eyes dart, even if Richie couldn’t necessarily dissect those things the way he could with the actions of his other friends. Not yet anyway, but based on how well he reads Mike he’s sure it’ll only be a matter of time. 

And he _ is _ used to it, knows by now to either act like he’s listening intently or cut Eddie off or drown him out, but today it’s different. Because Eddie _ isn’t _ talking, or spiraling, (they aren’t mutually exclusive,) instead he’s all shifting eyes and forehead creases and a bottom lip pulled taut between his teeth. It isn’t like he hasn’t said _ anything, _ but for a kid who has a lot to say all the time about dirt and grime and germs while simultaneously being _ gross, _he is sure as hell silent for a walk that consists mainly of aforementioned dirt, grime, and germs. 

They had been about halfway through the walk when Richie had noticed. Had been buzzing restlessly through each and every member of the pack as he always did, hanging off Bill’s shoulder and trying to kick rocks at his shoes, snatching Ben’s headphones off the back of his neck and trying to steal Stan’s fucking Bird Dictionary and receiving a disciplinary slap on the back of the head. He had just been swarming Bev and Mike, arms wrapped around their shoulders and trying to trip them, turning around to see if he was making Eddie laugh and Eddie was - Eddie was just _ staring. _Not at Richie, not at anything, actually. His gaze was drifting, from his dirty red sneakers and the palms of his hands to the grey-blue sky where it peeked through the trees. 

His feet were shuffling and his eyes were dazed and his teeth were pulling at the chapped skin of his lips and his hands were twisting around each other, all of which made Richie stop dead in his tracks, allowing Mike and Bev to untangle themselves from him and continue on, not taking notice to Eddie in the back. Eddie who was acting not at all like _Eddie _and causing a hot ball of anxiety to curl into Richie’s chest. Richie stares for a moment, waiting to see if Eddie would acknowledge him, but he doesn't. He keeps up his shuffling pace and glazed expression until he nearly crashes right into Richie. 

“Woah, hey,” Richie says, reaching his arms out to steady Eddie’s shoulders. “Running into people is my job, remember?” Eddie stares at him for a second, like it doesn’t register, and that makes Richie feel like maybe he shouldn’t have - he doesn’t know. Like it says something that he remembered the way they’d met, crashing into one another. Or more truthfully, Richie crashing into Eddie and Eddie doing his best to be polite about it. That sounds too much like a metaphor for where he stands now, though. Incessantly but not intentionally throwing himself at Eddie and Eddie doing what he can to leave himself out of it. 

But then Eddie’s mouth curves up, “It’s payback, then. It can’t just be you falling all over people all the time, that’s my-” He cuts himself off, face scrunching so quickly it’s almost not there at all, “Sorry. Wasn’t paying attention.” 

“Is everything okay?” Richie asks, briefly trying to decipher what Eddie had been getting at and then eventually giving up. He has to stop doing that. Reading so far into things that aren’t big enough to be read into at all. 

“What? Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” Eddie says, shaking his head a bit. He glances down to where Richie’s hands are still planted on his shoulders, firm and grounding. Richie had kind of forgotten they were there, but he doesn’t remove them. Feels the crisp-clean fabric of Eddie's shirt beneath the pads of his fingers. 

“You sure? Because you haven’t said like, anything about all of this,” Richie says, with a vague wave of his hand at their surroundings. 

“All of what?”

“_This_. The dirt and the bugs and that mud puddle, which you very narrowly avoided, by the way. I know this stuff kind of drives you nuts.” 

“You noticed that?” Eddie asks, eyes softening where they bore into Richie’s behind his glasses, his mouth quirking slightly like it was half a joke but not really. 

“Yeah. I pay attention to you,” Richie mumbles, and it's not really what he meant to say _ at all. _His mouth does that, always has, and it hadn’t mattered before because it was usually just bullshit. The first thought he had about something popping into his head and out of his mouth and it was fine. Because it was about school or music or what he thought about the movie his parents were watching and not. And not endearments and too honest admissions and Richie should really just stop. Thinking about these things, because it’s going to fuck something up. He should really be more cautious, around Eddie. Think before he speaks. Think before he touches. Think before he thinks. 

“You pay attention to me.” Eddie echoes, sort of under his breath, smile growing slightly, which isn’t really the reaction he’d expected. He'd sort of expected Eddie to ignore it all together. 

“Yeah. You sure your okay? You're acting different.” Richie says, brushing over it quickly, like it doesn’t matter. 

“I’ll um - I’ll tell you later? They’re all waiting for us.” Eddie responds with a wave toward the group behind him. Richie turns around then, removing his hands from Eddie’s shoulders to face his friends. Bill, Mike, and Beverly are all staring with varying expressions of confusion and worry, but Ben is smirking and Stan - Stan is too. Great, guess the ruse is up with him as well. Richie is honestly surprised it took him this long. 

“Okay, yeah,” Richie says, nodding and beginning to walk towards the group. Eddie moves to walk next to him now, bottom lip pulled between his teeth again. 

“This is pretty fucking gross,” Eddie murmurs, kicking at the ground with his sneakers. “I think I have dirt in my shoes.” 

“That’s all part of the fun, Eds.” Richie smirks, jostling into Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie’s nose scrunches at the nickname, shoving his own shoulder back into Richie’s.

“Yeah, I’m having the time of my life right now.” Eddie says back, but his smile has brightened and his eyes aren’t anywhere near as cloudy, so it’s okay. Better, at least for now.

They make their way toward the rest of the group where they have paused in waiting for them. Richie almost wishes they hadn’t, so he could berate Eddie into telling him what’s up. Richie worries it’s them, him and his friends, or even worse, just him alone. If that were the case Eddie probably wouldn’t have shown up at all today anyway, though. 

Richie watches his shoes for a moment as he walks, and then up at the sky where the air is tinged green from the overgrow aside from where the overcast sky makes its way through the trees. Richie assumes that if he didn’t live in Maine he would find it pretty beautiful, but after so long it’s become nothing but a mass of dirt, trees, the occasional shop, more dirt and more trees. Streets filled with ghosts, Richie at all ages. Hand and hand with his parents, then with Bill and Stan, then with all of them together. Ghosts on foot and ghosts on bikes. It’s boring, not much to look at. Still, there’s some light in the idea that he could show Eddie around Derry more, maybe finding beauty in the way he sees the town. New and different from the bustling city he grew up in, primary colors and lush green trees through new eyes as opposed to the tired ones Richie saw it through. 

“You doing alright, Eddie?” Beverly asks as they reach the group, setting a comforting hand on his shoulder and rubbing it for a second. It makes Richie’s chest lurch with jealousy but Eddie is speaking before he can berate himself for it. There was no point in things like that, envy and longing, they go hand in hand, and Richie has no business feeling either.

“Oh yeah, I’m fine. My asthma just sparked up for a second.” Eddie says, and it’s obviously a lie but it still makes Richie whirl around to stare at him incredulously. He makes eye contact with Bill, raising his eyebrows in a way that he hopes conveys; _ Did you know about this? _Bill shrugs his shoulders though, so Richie assumes the message went through. 

“Asthma?” Ben asks, beating Richie to it. Eddie flushes a bit, before snaking a hand into the back pocket of his cut-offs to retrieve an inhaler. 

“Yep,” He says, shortly but with no malice, “It was a lot worse when I was a kid, but now I keep it on me just in case I have any flare ups.” 

“Oh, it’s good you had it then,” Mike says with a kind smile before beginning to walk again. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says distantly in a way that makes Richie think that maybe that isn’t entirely true either, but it’s fine. They all have secrets, or had secrets at least, before they got close enough to spill the beans about everything in their lives. 

Bev had her dad, who left more bruises than he did anything else and her mom who ignored it all together. Stan had an affinity to cutting hospital corners into his bed sheets and getting stressed when dust gathered or he touched something sticky. Ben had his mom, who was nice enough but often encouraged his unhealthy habits as opposed to creating better ones, and years of words cut deep into his skin. Mike had the loneliness and shame that he carried for being homeschooled for a myriad of reasons, and confided that their house was almost burned down by Henry Bowers, all of which they hadn’t needed to touch on to understand. Bill worried that he wasn't the son his parents asked for, a knack for art and writing but bad marks in math and stuttering sentences, and Richie - well. Richie was queer, and they didn’t know that. But they knew that he talked too much and said the wrong words more often than not, and they knew how to bring him back to reality when it felt like his bones were jittering so hard under his skin he might just fly away. 

It would take time for Eddie to feel at ease with them enough to tell them all about himself, the good and the bad and the dirty, but it would happen. Richie knows this, just like he knows how to read Stan’s movements and Ben’s moods, just like he knows that one day he will feel at ease enough, too. At ease enough to say the words out loud to them that he could only mouth to himself. That day isn’t here yet, and maybe it won’t be for awhile, but it’ll come. That’s how it is - with them. Eventually you get so close to people that the idea of having secrets hurts worse than the idea that they’ll hate you after you tell them. 

They make their way to the clubhouse in relative silence, Ben moving to share his headphones with Beverly as best he can while Bill, Eddie and Mike talk with Stan about the different birds he points out occasionally. Richie moves between the two groups, sometimes asking Ben what song he’s playing and at other times harassing Stan into making the _ exact _bird call for the Red Sparrow he’s so thrilled about at the moment. Bill stops ahead of them, signalling that they’ve reached the patch of leaves that cover the door to the clubhouse. Richie doesn’t know why it’s hidden, no one comes down here anyway. But it’s something that makes sense for a place that’s theirs. Underground and tucked away, invisible to everyone aside from the people that matter. It’s good that Bill leads them there and stops when he does, because Richie has never had great directional sense. His short attention span coupled with the fact that he’s usually fucking around too much to pay attention to when they turn left and right left him as a pretty shitty human navigator. 

“So,” Bill starts as he brushes the leaves away from the hatch and pulls the rope, “This is the clubhouse,” He nearly tumbles over from the force of it, catching himself before doing some weird grand gesture with his arms, making Mike snort. 

“Act like you’ve been here before, Billy, Jesus,” Richie cracks, moving to go down the ladder. 

“I have, b-but Eddie hasn’t, shit-for-brains.” Bill snarks back, to which Eddie lets out his first sharp laugh of the afternoon. 

“Hey, fuck you!” Richie says with a point at Eddie, “I’ll have you all know my brains are _ not _shit. I’m tutoring the weasel over here.” 

“_Weasel?” _ Eddie gasps, eyes narrowing even as his mouth betrays him, curving into a smile. “Fuck _ you_, I’m like, not even four inches shorter than you.” 

“Still a weasel, dude,” Richie shrugs, finally making his way into the clubhouse. He sets his hands on the dusty plank of wood as his feet make their way down. Once he finally plants himself on the ground, he calls up; “Hey, Eds, beware of the rusty screw sticking up from the first rung.”

“_What?” _Eddie all but screeches, making Richie nearly double over from laughing. 

“He’s pulling your leg, Eds, don’t worry.” Ben says kindly. 

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie responds. 

“Richie just did!” 

“Yeah, and he’s on thin fucking ice.” 

Richie smiles privately at that, not knowing what to make of the symphony his heart is currently playing in his chest. The idea that Eddie didn’t want anyone else calling him the nickname Richie had coined made him sort of feel like he was floating. Floaty and airy and giddy, and stupid for feeling that way at all. He moves out of the way for the others to make their way down, Eddie second to last behind Ben because he didn’t know how to shut the hatch. Once Ben’s feet have planted themselves on the floor, Richie moves toward the hammock. 

“Oh yeah, this is not safe at _ all._” Eddie says, nodding to himself. 

“I think it’s pretty good for our first time,” Ben says, having the gratuity to look just a bit offended. 

“For sure,” Eddie says with a wave of his hand, clearly not intending on being rude. “It looks great, but that ledge is like, two seconds away from falling down and breaking somebody’s _ something_.” He points at the plank of wood hanging at the top of the ceiling in the back corner. 

“Well, no one sits back there anyway,” Ben says with a shrug, moving to lean against the wall. 

“Right, that’s fine then.” Eddie nods, and something about it makes Richie let out a sharp laugh. “What?” Eddie asks him, already grinning.

“You’re totally freaking out,” Richie says simply, throwing himself into the hammock with so much force it gives an alarming _ creak, _causing Eddie to flinch despite himself and Richie to laugh even harder. 

“Am not! This is cool, it’s super cool.” 

“Is it cool though?” 

“Fuck you.” 

Richie kept laughing, so much so that he had to cover his eyes with his hand because even Eddie’s face was enough to send him into another bout of sporadic giggles. He was vaguely aware of Bev showing Eddie around, pointing out where they kept books and comics and other things. Richie allowed himself a brief moment of peace, smiling quietly and drooping one leg off to the side of the hammock, swinging it lazily. He hears Mike start up his boombox, The Cure’s debut album spilling out of it in crackled waves. “Hell yeah, Mikey, rock on,” He says, opening his eyes and throwing Mike a thumbs up. Mike smiles at him brightly, bobbing his head to the song. 

“I did it for you, Rich,” Mike says.

“And I love you for it.” Richie grins back. He hears a bang somewhere behind him, and whips his head to see Stan pressing himself against the wall away from the corner. 

“There’s a fucking _ spider,_” Stan says, pressing a hand against his heaving chest. 

“So your plan was to, what, make a loud enough noise that you scared it away?” Richie asks, feeling the laughter bubbling in his chest again. Shit, maybe his mom slipped something into his orange juice this morning, because he doesn’t think he’s ever found his friends so funny in his life. 

“It was big!” Stan says defensively and then immediately after, “Beep Beep, Richie, fuck you.”

“I didn’t even say anything!” 

“You were going to.” Stan says, his expression reading like he dares Richie to contradict him. Which, okay, he’s right, but still. Fuck Stanley for knowing him so well. 

“Touche,” Richie says instead, squirming in the hammock to make himself more comfortable. “Bev, will you kill the thing so Stan can breathe?” Beverly looks between the two of them, then glancing at Bill, Mike and Ben who are pointedly ignoring her gaze. 

“Seriously? You guys are scared of _ spiders? _” She asks, eyebrows raised and a prompt hand on her hip. 

“I’m not,” Richie pipes, “But I’m also comfy, and I know when I get up Bill is gonna come over and steal my spot, so.” Bill makes a protesting noise at that, but he doesn’t argue. That makes Richie smirk, he knows that motherfucker like the back of his hand. 

Bev makes her way over to the corner, where Stan has been sliding his back against the wall nonchalantly. He ducks under her arms and scrambles over to Eddie, where he sits pensively on the bench. Stan reaches behind him, pulling out the small box of comics and setting it in his lap.

“You wanna read any of these?” Eddie’s eyes widen comically, no pun intended, and he dips a hand in to shuffle through. There aren’t very many, the box filled with old torn up issues, mainly Richie’s and Ben’s. The ones that are actually worth another read or two still laying dormant in their respective bedrooms. Eddie pulls out two 1983 DC books and eyes them carefully. 

“My mom doesn’t let me read comics, says they’ll rot my brain or give me bad dreams or something, but I used to sneak around in the library at my old school and read them anyway.” Eddie says, flipping through the pages. “The old ‘Shazam!’ ones were my favorite.” 

“Well, feel free to read as many as you like down here,” Stan says with a small smile, “They’re not the real good ones, but they’re great to read when you’re bored.” 

“I’ve got more at my house, if you ever wanna come over and read them. My dad is a bit of a nerd, so I have like, every issue spanning from when he was a kid until now.” Richie says. Eddie glances up at him, smiling slow and soft. 

“That’d be great, Rich, thanks,” Richie nods and gives a wave of his hand, relaxing back into the hammock. He sways there for a bit, bopping his head to Mike’s tapes and listening to his friends talk. Richie should probably not do that, invite Eddie over to spend more time with him than necessary. He can’t help it, though, figures it’ll probably take time to get himself under control enough to not offer things like that up. It’s like a double ended sword, a pendulum, the spot between a rock and a hard place. Spending more time with Eddie because it makes him happy, spending less time with Eddie to ease the ache in his chest. Either way, it’ll suck. 

Eddie is quick-witted and sharp-tongued and simultaneously all sweet grins and lingering touches and it’s. It’s kind of tearing Richie apart, those things, making it nearly impossible for him to shut that ever yapping piece of his brain up. The one that yearns for touch and god forbid _ romance, _ which is a word that always made him cringe but now it makes his heart speed up in his chest. He knows realistically boys like him don’t get that, not in Derry and certainly not at age seventeen, but it’s still there. Carving into his chest and filling up his lungs, the wanting and the aching. To hold someone’s hand and kiss their cheeks, to make them smile and do cheesy shit with, dates to the diner on the corner and tapes filled with his favorite songs. He daydreams about it sometimes, about a no-named figure he could do it with. Recently, this figure it starting to look a lot like Eddie. And that’s fine, in his head, giving a name and a face to his desires. It’s only not fine when Eddie does something too much alike his visions, and his heart pounds painfully and his cheeks heat up and all he wants to do it pull Eddie in, and he _ can’t, _so he settles for pushing him away. 

It’s okay, though. He’ll be okay. Richie allows his current mantra to play through his head, _ one more year to freedom, _ and takes big shallow breaths. The idea of having to let go of all of his friends hurts, having to let go of all the pieces of himself that he’s gained and traded with them until it’s formed him into someone he can’t recognize. He wonders if those pieces will go with them when they do, if he’ll get himself back, if he _ wants _himself back. Distantly he remembers the part of him that was cut out when he’d stolen the book at the library that day. If by the time he’d accepted who he was that will return to him too, or if it will be replaced by something else. 

But maybe he won’t have to. Let go of them, that is. Maybe they’ll go together, the seven of them, to California or New York City or Chicago, and he’ll keep their pieces and they’ll keep his and he’ll gain some, too, from Eddie. And by then he’ll be out and he’ll go on dates and watch the rest of them grow up in front of him. Richie - Richie will watch Eddie find love, maybe even help him, and it’ll be fine. Eddie will find a nice girl and Richie will find a nice someone and they’ll go on double dates and maybe. Maybe by then it wont ache like the thought does right now. Maybe by then, this feeling in his chest that’s definitely developing into a crush he insists he _ does not _have will be gone. Whatever, it’s two years away. Richie hopes that’ll be enough time to prepare for it.

“Hey,” Eddie says, like he can read Richie’s mind or something. Richie opens his eyes slowly, turning his head to where Eddie is already looking at him. “How long do we each get the hammock for? My back is starting to cramp from this seat.” Eddie puts emphasis on this with a wiggle and a flinch, which shouldn’t be cute but it _ is, _and Richie has to clench his eyes shut again. 

“Oh, we don’t really have a set time period, or anything.” Mike says.

“Really? Well we should,” Eddie ponders, “Like, ten or fifteen minutes until we switch.” 

“What, like make a sign?” Richie jokes, raising his eyebrows at Eddie. 

“No, not a _ sign, _douchebag. Maybe just a - a verbal agreement. Because I can already tell you're a hammock hog.” Eddie says.

“Hammock-Hog,” Richie repeats, like it’s one word. “I like that one, Eds, better than Tozier.” Eddie flips the middle-finger at him, rolling his eyes. 

“Well _ anything _is better than Eds, asshole, maybe you shouldn’t be the one on nickname duty.” 

“You don’t like ‘Eds,’ Eds?” Richie asks, feigning hurt and placing a hand over his heart. “That hurts, but I can take it. How about Edward?”

“Nope. Ew. I hate my full name,” Eddie replies, shivering. 

“But it’s cute!” Richie protests, “Okay, Eddie-Bear?”

“Gross, my mom calls me that!” 

“Sexy, alright, that’s taken, let’s try Eddie Spaghetti?” 

“No.” 

“Just Spaghetti?” 

“Absolutely not.” 

“Edward Spaghedward?” 

“What’s wrong with _ Eddie, _huh, dickbag?” Eddie asks him, challenging and frustrated only betrayed by how his lips are pulling up around his teeth into a grin. “It’s already a nickname.” 

“You meet Richie Tozier, you get a nickname,” Mike says, almost verbatim to what Ben had said to him when they first met.

Stan realizes this, mumbling “Rite of passage.” From where his head is tipped into his book.

Eddie looks around helplessly before sighing in defeat. “Okay, Eds is _ fine_, I guess, but don’t wear it out.” He says with a strict point in Richie’s direction. 

“_Never,_” Richie replies, hands up in surrender. 

“_Anyway, _ where was I before big-mouth over there started yakking?” Eddie’s eyebrows crunch in concentration before the hand that was already pointing at Richie forms itself into a _ Snap! _“Hammock times, right, so what are we thinking, ten minutes each?” Richie shrugs his agreement, kicking his feet out until he’s sitting up in the hammock, back to the air and feet planted onto the ground. 

“Yeah, t-ten minutes seems fair.” Bill says. The rest of them all give their varying forms of compliance until Eddie seems satisfied, slapping his hands onto his thighs and standing up. 

“Great, cool,” Eddie says, making his way over to Richie, “So, get up.” 

“What, why?” Richie asks, just to be a shithead. It’s his brand, what can he say? 

“I swear you’re stupid.” Eddie mumbles, shoving at his shoulder until Richie placates and stands up, stretching his arms above his head. Eddie moves around him, slipping into the hammock with much more ease and grace than Richie had before. “How you’re at the top of our class I will _ never _know.” 

“It’s my cute face,” Richie says easily as he moves towards Eddie’s old spot on the bench next to Stan. “I’m irresistible, ask anyone.” 

“That must be it,” Eddie says distractedly, kicking his legs up and opening his comic book once again. Richie settles in, pulling at Stan’s curls until he gets an elbow to his chest in return. He tells Mike to _ Bump that shit up, _wiggling in his seat in some form of dance as Mike turns the music a smidge louder. He bugs Stan, dances around the room and plops down next to Bill to ask about the English assignment due Monday, shoves his way between Bev and Mike to share a cigarette with her, helps Ben write down good songs for the new tape he’s working on and sways the hammock enough that Eddie wacks him with his comic. When Eddie’s ten minutes are up, he sits next to him on the ground and they discuss meeting after school on Monday to study. 

They stay in the clubhouse for a few hours, until Richie’s bottomless pit of a stomach starts making noises that are worrying even to _ him _ and they decide they should call it a day. It’s nearing five at night according to Eddie’s wristwatch, and he’d promised he’d be home no later than 5:30pm, so they agree to part ways and meet up in front of the school tomorrow. As they make their way up the ladder, there’s another _ Bang! _From behind them, and Richie nearly puts a crook in his neck at how sharply his head whips around. 

“Told you that was going to fall off,” Eddie says, almost too calmly as they eye the pillar that has found its way to the ground, light cascading into the dim darkness in its place. Ben gives a disappointed sigh. 

“I’ll fix it later, let’s go.” Ben mutters with a weak wave of his land and a longing look at the plank of wood. If Richie didn’t know any better, he’d assume the clubhouse was Ben’s true love. 

Once at the exit, or entrance - depending how you look at it - of the Barrens, they say their goodbyes. Beverly, Bill and Mike make their way together, because they all live in the same corner of Derry. Ben and Stan go the opposite direction, their houses basically the same way until they get to Cherry Lane where Stan goes right and Ben goes left. 

And Eddie, as it turns out, goes the same way Richie does. They walk in relative but not awkward silence through downtown, passing the Synagogue and the Kissing Bridge as they do, Richie’s skin crawling uncomfortably at the not-so-nice carvings, but he doesn’t say anything. Eddie eyes them, but he doesn’t speak on it either and Richie is grateful for that. Wouldn’t that just be a treat? Walking across a bridge filled with homophobic limericks with your not-crush and finding out he agrees with them? Richie prefers ignorance as bliss, he always has. The silence as they cross the bridge is deafening and anything but comfortable, but as they come to the end, it feels like a veil has lifted. 

Richie shakes his hair out, adjusting his glasses and whistling under his breath. They turn onto Canal Street and talk about school and music, which bands they’d see live if they had the chance and what they want to study in college. Eddie agrees that after their senior year he wants to get out of Derry, only having been here a short period of time but noting that he can _ feel _it. The slowness, the oddness of the town. The way that it makes you feel sort of ill and dizzy. 

They’re nearing Main Street when Richie thinks about asking Eddie what was wrong earlier, and he decides that if there was a time where Eddie would feel comfortable talking about it, that would be now. 

“Hey,” Richie starts, almost cutting Eddie off. “What was it you were going to tell me this afternoon?” 

“Hm?” Eddie hums, glancing up and searching Richie’s face for - for _ something_. He seems to find it, because he looks down at his shoes and clears his throat. “Oh, _ that._”

“Yeah, _ that._” Richie repeats, ducking his head to try and catch Eddie’s eyes. It doesn’t work. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, I don’t want to pry-”

“No, no it’s alright,” Eddie interrupts hurriedly, “It’s just, I’ve never really told anybody? Or - no one has ever _ asked, _” He cuts himself off then, looking up at the sky and then back to the ground, eyebrows furrowing like he’s wondering why no one has. “My mom is sort of, crazy?” 

“What?” Richie asks, almost laughing until he remembers the far away look in Eddie’s eyes and his bottom lip pulled taut between his teeth, and then he’s shutting his mouth so quick and rough his teeth clack. 

“Well, not _ crazy, _but-” Eddie’s eyes squeeze shut and he makes a frustrated noise, “Sorry, it’s-”

“You really don’t have to tell me, Eddie, I promise,” Richie says softly, “Not now, at least.” 

“I _ want _to, though,” Eddie murmurs, eyes opening and finally meeting Richie’s. “I want to, but it’s really hard to explain.” 

“I understand.” 

“She, okay.” Eddie takes a deep breath. “Back in New York, when I was younger, my dad died.” 

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Richie says, reaching out to rub Eddie’s shoulder and almost tripping himself over his own shoelaces. 

“No it’s - sorry, can we stop walking?” Eddie asks, tugging Richie over to the sidewalk and planting his feet there. Eddie reaches into his pocket and fumbles for something, _ his inhaler, _ Richie’s brain reminds him, but Eddie doesn’t take it out. His hand forms a fist in his pocket like it’s grasped around it. “He died when I was really young. Cancer, I think, but my mom,” Eddie shakes his head, “She didn’t handle it well. She got really scared something was going to happen to _ me. _” 

“_Did _ something happen?” Richie asks, looking up and down Eddie’s body like he’d be able to see the signs of some crippling illness from years ago.

“No,” Eddie says with a firm shake of his head, “But, I didn’t know that until a year or two ago. She, like, convinced me I was sick? Convinced herself too, I think, but. I spent a lot of my life in and out of hospitals, and taking pills and sitting out of P.E. I had never even eaten Halloween candy until last year because she told me I was allergic to chocolate _ and _peanuts.” 

“Woah, seriously?” Richie asks, eyes wide and his heart thumping uncomfortably. The idea of Eddie, younger than now but still the same ball of fire, only weaker and _ scared _didn’t sit well with him. “Doesn’t that like - isn’t that bad? Taking a bunch of pills you don’t need, with the side effects and everything?” 

“No, that’s-” A loud, sharp laugh bubbles out of Eddie’s chest, but it isn’t happy. It doesn’t curl around Richie like smoke the way it usually does. Instead it makes his heart jump and the back of his neck prickle with sweat. “That’s the _ thing. _The doctors knew I wasn’t sick, they told her that I wasn’t, but she didn’t listen. So after awhile they just - humoured her. Prescribed me placebos.”

“Placebos?”

“Fake pills. All sorts of them, heart disease and muscle relaxers and ones for chronic coughs, but they didn’t do anything. Because nothing was _ wrong. _” 

“Holy shit, Eddie,” Richie says, and it’s all he can think of to say. He feels a lot, at that moment. Sadness and sympathy for the boy in front of him, and anger, hot and heavy in his chest for Eddie’s mother. It’s - weird. To say the least. He knew parents weren’t perfect. Even in a small town like Derry. _ Especially _ in Derry. Richie had his own friends to prove it, Bev, Bill, and even Ben. Hell, he knew is _ own _weren’t perfect. Distant and hard to reach like everyone else in this town, but. Eddie just felt so - so far away. Untouchable, from things like that. But maybe Eddie is just like the rest of them. Different and uncool and a little fucked up. Which is comforting, to know that Eddie isn’t perfect, but it’s also frustrating. Richie thinks, with sudden clarity, that Eddie deserves a whole lot better. 

“Holy shit.” Eddie agrees, shuffling his feet. 

“Wait, you said she used to do all that stuff, what about now?” Richie asks, eyes trained on Eddie’s pocket, where his inhaler lays clutched between his fingers.

Eddie shakes his head, “Not anymore, it stopped when I found out. I went to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription, and the guy working there - he told me. Said he figured I was ‘_Old enough now,’ _ whatever that means, and explained that I wasn’t sick. Hadn’t _ ever _been sick. He said he couldn’t speak on the other stuff, but he was betting I wasn’t allergic to anything either.”

“Were you?”

“Amoxicillin,” Eddie says with a small smile, “So if I ever get an ulcer I’m sort of screwed but, nothing else.” 

“And the inhaler?” Richie asks, moving his gaze back to Eddie’s wide brown eyes. His face is set, though, no trace of fear or vulnerability. 

“Yeah, no asthma either.” 

“Why do you..” Richie trails off, gesturing weakly to Eddie’s pocket. Eddie’s hand clenches then, and his gaze moves from Richie’s face to the street behind him. 

“Anxiety, I think? I spent so long thinking that like, _ panic _attacks were asthma attacks, so when I get them-” Eddie shrugs his shoulders roughly. “It helps.” 

“Fucking hell, Eds, that’s-” Richie shakes his head slowly. “That’s a lot. I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Eddie replies, “I told her I found out, she lost her shit, apologized, quit her job and moved us out here. I think she was worried that I’d tell someone, and that they’d call CPS or something. I don’t know.” 

“What happened earlier, then?” Richie asks, because that doesn’t really explain it. If Eddie stood up to her, and she had stopped, Eddie’s quiet, stressed behavior earlier couldn’t be blamed on that. Richie knows he’s probably prying, pushing his luck with the bout of honesty Eddie has disposed on him, but it’s hard not to. Eddie looks at him again, staring right into Richie’s eyes. His mouth opens, closes, opens again before he clears his throat, looking down and then back up. 

“Will you hate me if I say I can’t tell you, right now?” 

“I would _ never _ hate you,” Richie says softly, reaching up again and rubbing at Eddie’s shoulder. He means it, too. In a way that hurts because it’s so honest. Richie wasn’t a malicious person, hadn’t ever really hated anyone, but the idea that he could hate any of his friends - that he could hate _ Eddie, _makes him feel sort of sick. Eddie’s cheeks heat up, and he moves his hand like he’s going to place it on top of Richie’s, thinks better of it, and then does it anyway. Eddie’s hands are warm and soft, almost sweaty but not really, and he squeezes Richie’s fingers. It’s a lot, feeling that much of Eddie on his skin. 

“Thanks. Not just for - thanks for asking. And caring. It means a lot.” Eddie whispers, staring up at him. Richie squeezes Eddie’s shoulder and brings his hand back to his own side, allowing Eddie’s fingers to trail his wrist and palm and feeling the ache in his chest for doing so. 

“It’s okay, really. Thanks for telling me.”

Eddie clears his throat and nods, gesturing forward with his hand and beginning to walk. “So, any secrets you wanna share with me? Crazy parents or childhood trauma? I’m open to it.”

Richie snorts. “Nothing that comes to mind,” He says, and it’s a lie. It’s probably the worst lie he’s ever told. Because Eddie just shared something with him, something so personal and painful and Richie wishes he had something, _ anything, _ to offer him in return. Something that wasn’t the whole sexuality thing, something that wasn’t the words threatening to pour into his chest and out of his mouth, words that sounded like; _ I like boys. I like you. I want to hold your hand and kiss your hair and I want to save you. I know you don’t need me too, and you wouldn't let me anyway. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting it. _He doesn’t say any of that, though. Briefly, he wishes he was brave enough to, but he isn’t. Maybe part of him is, the part that exists when he’s surrounded by his friends, but Richie finds he can’t be brave where it counts. Instead, he jokes about school and music and tells embarrassing stories about himself and the others, and when they get to Eddie’s house he pulls him into a hug so strong and fierce he has to clench his teeth to stop the words from spilling out anyway. Eddie hugs him back, though, warm and soft and healthy in his arms, before he touches Richie’s hair and laughs softly. And then he’s gone.

And Richie - Richie is _ fucked. _He is so unbelievably fucked. 

\--------------------------

_Winter, 1993_

Richie finds himself in the school library Monday afternoon alone, tapping his pencil incessantly and staring at the posters on the wall. All bright colored and bubble lettered, motivational quotes stamped up against the old drywall. He isn’t here much, truth be told, partially because he doesn’t find himself needing the extra study time but also because anything he could find worth reading he’d end up getting from Bill anyway. It isn’t bad though, the librarian is nice and it’s warm inside. The chair he’s in is pressing uncomfortably into his back and it smells like old books and dust, but he’s spent his time in worse places. 

Eddie is late, or maybe Richie is early, having dashed out of his last class to make it here on time even though it wasn’t necessary to do so. Richie glances up at the clock, and it reads ten after three, so Eddie _ is _late. By five minutes, so it’s not like he was ditched. It’s not like Richie’s worried he was too obvious and hugged him too tight and touched him too much the last time they saw each other, or anything. That would be stupid. 

So, Richie taps his pencil in time with Space Oddity by Bowie, which has been blasting in his head ever since he left his house and biked to school, and tries to keep his face unreadable and his body in his seat which is growing more uncomfortable by the second, and he waits. Time is passing oddly, because he keeps swearing twenty minutes have gone by but with a quick glance at the clock, it's only been thirty seconds. When this happens three times he avoids the clock all together and opens his backpack - digging around to find his calculus notebook and instead settling on dumping the entire thing out to reorganize it anyway. He’s halfway through separating crumpled papers in his Chemistry folder from ones actually worth holding onto when he hears the door to the library bang open. 

Eddie walks in, or truthfully _ stumbles _ in, all big eyes and flushed cheeks and mussed hair, and it makes Richie’s breath catch. Honestly, everything about Eddie makes his breath catch. And his heart race and his stomach fill with what could only be described as butterflies and really, Richie is lucky that he’s never had a crush on anyone before. Because if _ this _is what it’s like, this all encompassing feeling of lightheadedness and rushed sentences, he’s pretty sure he would be broken by now. A glitch of a helpless teenage boy who feels too much all at once. An Error 404, a cracked screen. Honestly, he shouldn’t have let Bill make him watch ‘Strange Days’ last Friday because his head is all filled up with robot metaphors and they all hit a little too close to home. 

Eddie spots him, moves towards him, smiling apologetically as he does. Richie holds his hand up in a sheepish wave and watches him walk. Eyes his starchy blue jeans and dark red pullover, and feels it all hit him again. Jesus Christ, this was probably not a good idea. The studying thing. The befriending Eddie thing. Richie doesn’t know how to do this, hasn’t ever had to before. He doesn’t know how to keep to himself, never has, not his hands or his words or his thoughts. Anytime he’s had too, it’s left him fumbling. Voice cracks and red cheeks and that odd feeling like your tongue is too big for your mouth. Subconsciously, Richie pulls his hands to his chest away from his papers and folds them together, to stop himself from - who knows - reaching out to Eddie or gouging his own eyes out behind his glasses. Whichever would hurt less. 

“Hey,” Eddie says softly once he’s reached the table and sat down, “Sorry it took me forever, I was-” But then he cuts himself off, looking down at the table which is still covered in a mess of papers, writing utensils, a ruler, two calculators and crumbs, probably, and staring at it. 

“What?” Richie asks,

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says again, breaching his gaze to look at Richie with narrowed eyes and a slow smirk spreading over his lips, “Is this - is this what the inside of your backpack looks like? All the time?” 

“Oh, um,” Richie says, eloquently as always, “Yeah?” 

Eddie looks at him, for second, warm eyes and a soft smile and a slow shake of his head, like he’s thinking something over, before he sighs and plops down into the seat. “Alright, let me at it.” 

It takes all of ten minutes for the two of them to organize the contents of Richie’s backpack. Eddie holding up an old granola bar wrapper between the tips of his fingers, face scrunched in disgust and berating Richie endlessly for being so unorganized, but they do it. Richie finds he doesn’t care how much Eddie batters at him for being gross or uncleanly, because Eddie’s talking to him and looking at him and that’s all he can ask for anyway. Even if Eddie is glancing at him like he’s the scum of the earth, which in all honesty he probably is, it’s worth it to see his upper lip curl and to feel his hand shove at Richie’s shoulder. Richie knows that thinking like that isn’t - it’s not helping him. He feels torn, kind of. Which isn’t a new feeling when it comes to Eddie but it is new in general and he doesn’t really know what to do with it. 

He doesn’t have to figure it out, though. Not now, at least, because before Richie knows it Eddie is sitting back down from his walk to the nearest trash can and getting a pump of hand sanitizer from the front desk and pulling out his own notebook. They start working from there, bent over second-hand books and crisp white pages, starting with this weeks assignment and moving from there. They fuck around more than they do actual work, because Eddie didn’t really need the extra help. Richie finds he doesn’t have to explain much of anything, instead checking Eddie’s equations once he finishes them and helping him through others when he gets stuck. Richie, although he doesn’t necessarily care for math or history or science or anything having to do with school, never really minded it. His brain moves quick, receives information and understands it easily, a trait he knows not everyone possesses. Still, he liked calculus. Or the idea of it, anyway. Dissecting the changes of values related by a function connected by time. Alternatively, dissecting formulas of time, which is a sentence that to him feels big and important. Time was a funny thing, for Richie. The time when things occurred and the timing in which they did. If that had anything to do with calculus at all, or if it was a metaphor for something bigger, he doesn’t know. But he does know numbers, and he does know time, and like all things in the life of Richie Tozier, it fell into place where it belonged. 

He figures, that if there were a higher power or a Creator or some shit, he was gifted with small amounts of genius and cursed with other things. Richie guesses that’s probably how it was for everyone. Like some form of karma that you can’t control. Richie finds school easy but he can’t sit still or keep his mouth closed for long periods of time. He can make friends at the drop of the hat but he can’t have crushes, or - he can, but on boys instead of girls. He can convince someone like Eddie to hang out with him but in order to do that, he has to deal with wanting something he can never have. Pros and cons, and even if you have no choice in the cards you get dealt, at least you can choose the route in which you choose to deal with them. Either way, nothing was ever easy. Pros and cons have their own pros and cons, and even smaller one’s built into that, and eventually you just stop paying attention because trying to build your life around what _ may be _ and what _ could have been _left you disconnected enough that it didn’t matter anyway. 

Which is why Richie finds himself scooting his chair closer to Eddie’s than he needs to over the course of the two hours they spend in the library, which is why he finds himself leaning into the touch when Eddie shoves at his shoulder, which is why he finds himself staring at the constellation of freckles on Eddie’s nose and cheeks instead of his own assignment. Fuck it, pros and cons, it doesn’t matter anyway. Nothing will come of it - or not in the sense that it’ll have anything to do with their relationship or lack thereof in the future. Either they’ll turn 18 and go somewhere with the rest of their friends or they’ll part ways, and Richie taking what he can get in terms of drinking Eddie in will be a blip in time. A few seconds, a few minutes, an hour. In the long run, it won’t be a day he remembers. 

And then they’re leaving, Eddie to the front of the school where his mom goes to pick him up and Richie to the back where his bike lays dormant in the rack by 5:00pm. Before they go their separate ways, though, in the middle of an empty hallway three paces away from where they say their goodbyes, Eddie hugs Richie. He glances around quickly before he pulls on Richie’s arms and wraps himself around him, and it’s quick. It’s barely even there - a push and pull and a brief second of warmth and a whispered “Thanks,” from him before he’s gone again, waving at Richie sheepishly before turning around all together and walking away, not looking back no matter how bad Richie wishes he would and it’s. It’s _ embarrassing, _ the way it makes Richie feel. Like all of his hairs are standing on end and like his cells are buzzing and his blood is rushing to his cheeks. It’s a hug, it’s simple, he’s done it with every single one of his friends on more than one occasion but it also _ isn’t _because it’s never made him feel like this before. 

Richie gets his bike, pushes off into the street and rides home, and thinks that maybe he was wrong. Wrong about today not being something he’ll remember, because his cheeks are still red and his arms are still tingling and there’s a pressure on his chest like he can still feel Eddie pressed against him. It doesn’t go away even when he pulls up to his house and even when he shuts the door to his bedroom and flops down on his bed and selfishly, like always, he doesn’t really want it to. 

\--------------------------

_Spring, 1993_

They spend a lot of time together over the span of the next two weeks, either with the other Losers or just by themselves, and it doesn’t get any easier. It’s rare that it’s just them alone outside of the library, though, and that helps. They go downtown with Bev and show Eddie the big secondhand store three doors down from the Aladdin. Eddie picks out big striped sweaters and more light-wash jeans and Richie gathers more patterned button ups two sizes too big and bright colored shorts and Bev gathers a mix of both. It’s a lot and also not enough, to see Eddie covered in red, blue and cream, drowning in a too-big cable knit and telling Richie that the shirt he’s picked out - bright blue and orange marigolds - is offensive to look at. The shop smells like mothballs and cleaning products, and it’s all green and ugly mustard yellow, but Eddie loves it. 

They go to the movies too, all seven of them, one Friday evening when Mike is off of work and Eddie and Richie decided that they could deal with one less study session this week. They gather in the arcade, just like before, and nothing has changed except for the fact that Eddie is there. Taking up all the space in Richie’s peripheral vision and filling up his senses until the arcade isn’t neon lights and fresh, cold air and instead it’s wavy brown hair and apple-shampoo. Eddie plays street-fighter too, unlike the rest of them, and for the first time ever it isn’t Richie against machine but Richie against Eddie, and Richie loses more games than he’d like to admit. Eddie isn’t even good at it, either, but he’s warm against Richie’s side and their elbows keep touching and his face reflected on the dirty screen is distracting. 

They go and see Groundhog Day, and once again it’s a movie that Richie thinks will follow him in different ways. It’s not really because of the movie, though it was good, it’s just that Richie wasn’t really paying attention. They sit nearly identically to how they did when they had met Mike Hanlon, only now Richie is on the end and Eddie is smushed between them. Richie watches the movie and tries not to focus too hard on where their hands meet inside the popcorn bucket and how Eddie leans into him when he laughs and how it felt when Eddie dropped a handful of candy into his palm, clean-cut fingernails against dry cracked skin. Once again, the theater which was usually all encompassing - deep dark shades of red and gold and the overbearing scent of burnt butter is taken up by Eddie. That’s a common theme, Richie is finding recently, things that used to overwhelm his already short attention span now replaced by Eddie, and it’s bad and it’s good and it’s confusing, more than anything else. 

Richie bikes Eddie home again that night and pretends it’s more than it is. Because he isn’t biking him home because it’s the gentlemanly thing to do, or whatever. They had left the theater with the rest of their friends, and Mike had biked with them up until they skidded to a stop in Eddie’s driveway and Mike had gotten off and hugged them both goodbye before he had left too, but still. Richie stands in the drive awkwardly for a second, and Eddie is giggling over some scene in Groundhog Day that Richie can’t remember seeing before he’s silent again, rocking back and forth on his heels and tugging on his left arm like he’s waiting for something. Richie doesn’t know what he’s waiting for - and thinks that maybe, if he was someone else and they were somewhere else that Eddie would be waiting for a kiss and that’s. That thought feels like it shuts Richie down, the idea of kissing Eddie. How his lips might feel and how his hands might feel cupping Richie’s face, and once again Richie finds himself in unfamiliar territory where he feels he has no business being. And Eddie is watching him, like he’s still _ waiting _and Richie knows Eddie can hear his sharp intake of breath and can probably see, in the dim yellow of his porch light, the way that Richie’s cheeks get red, like they always do, and it’s humiliating. Eddie watches him until he doesn’t and scuffs his shoes before letting out a scoff of a laugh. 

“What?” Richie asks, and he tries to keep his voice neutral but it’s rough and simultaneously too high pitched, but he feels like Eddie _ knows _and also like he should probably hop on his bike and head home. 

“You’re stupid,” Eddie sighs, and it’s - _ confusing. _ Like all things with Eddie are. Because the words make Richie feel obvious and the tone makes him feel oblivious and he doesn’t _ know. _Anything at all, it feels like. Eddie was made up of things like that, words that say one thing and tones and actions that say another, and Richie tells himself constantly to not read into anything when it comes to Eddie but he can’t help it. It isn't like his brain has ever listened to him anyway. 

“Why?” Richie asks, because he feels like he should. Because it’s ripping off a bandaid instead of slowly peeling it and that’s how he should approach this, anyway. If Eddie does know or even if he doesn’t, dragging it on was only hurting Richie and he’s never been a fan of self-sacrifice. Not intentionally, that is. 

“Nothing, it’s just,” Eddie says, inhaling too quick and then he’s stepping closer into Richie’s space and Richie has a split second or two where he thinks maybe, _ maybe_, Eddie is going to throw caution to the wind, or throw the Eddie that Eddie has become in Richie’s head out the window and kiss him, but he doesn’t. 

He does hug Richie though, not for the first time and not for the last, but it isn’t quick. He wraps his arms around Richie’s shoulders and ducks his head into his chest, and Richie gets the memo not a second later and hugs him back. Because he’s selfish. Because even if it hurts it also feels good, and he’s going to take what he can get - when it comes to Eddie. He’s going to take what he can get until he’s all full up and it completely breaks him, and that _ might _ be self-sacrifice, when he thinks about it. It probably is, but Eddie is warm against him again and his body seems to melt when Richie places his own arms around him and it’s worth it. It’s worth _ everything. _

\--------------------------

_Spring, 1993_

When Richie shows up at the clubhouse in the Barrens alone, the last person he expects to see there is Eddie. 

It’s Thursday afternoon, and they don’t study on those days so Richie wasn’t expecting to see him outside of school anyway, and Eddie had gotten picked up early at lunch for a doctors appointment, leaving him out of any and all after-school adventures with the Loser’s Club or lack thereof. It’s the latter in particular today, because Ben and Bill had an APUSH project they had to finish and Bev was grounded, and Richie didn’t know what Stan and Mike were doing but Stan had waved Richie off and Mike knew that if they didn’t show up at the Aladdin to just bike home. 

So, bored out of his mind and avoiding going home to do chores and watch slow daytime TV until his parents arrived, Richie had biked to the Barrens. They usually walk here, because it’s quick and biking through trees and over dirt paths was hard and taxing, so instead of leaving their bikes to get stolen or tampered with at the entrance they just opted not to. Today though, Richie decides to hide his bike vertically behind the big oak tree up front and walk his way through, saying a silent prayer for it as he does. He doesn’t have a car, which isn’t unlike most of the kids in this town but still just as annoying. His birthday is coming up though, just a handful of weeks from now, so he can hope. Richie’s parents had been hinting at it, quick jabs about how; “_Pretty soon you’ll be going to the store for us, Rich,” _which was exciting and also bound to be a let down if they didn’t pull through, but it was fine. 

Richie had made his way through the trees and dirt, only getting lost a few times and only for a bit, which was good. Surprising, actually, because he was kind of sure he would lose his way and never make it out, and the fact that that hadn’t been enough to convince him to just _ not _go in was probably a little concerning but like he’s said; there were a lot more pressing issues to deal with if he wanted to dissect everything wrong with him. That wasn’t his job anyway, he could save that for the inevitable therapist he pays too much for when he’s thirty five and alone in the big city - be it Los Angeles or New York. 

When he's made it to the entrance of the clubhouse, sweaty and panting from digging through leaves thrice before when he thought he had already made it there, the sharp yelp that penetrates through his ears as he opens the hatch startles him enough to almost fall face-first onto the dirt floor. It doesn't though, and after jumping out of his skin enough to where it left his ears ringing he peers down at the inside trying to gauge who or _ what _had made the noise. 

“Who’s down there?” Richie asks, putting on his best impression of what was probably supposed to sound like Mr. Nell, the irish cop who always gives them shit for being down in the Barrens, but probably just sounded like Richie with a very half-assed irish tang. 

“Richie?” Eddie calls up, and it sort of through Richie for a loop. Richie’s eyebrows furrow, and he lays flat on his stomach to get a better angle at the inside of the clubhouse.

“Eds?” Richie says, and by then Eddie has gotten up and walked towards the entrance, standing at the bottom and gazing up at him, hands firmly on his hips. 

“Not my name,” Eddie says, in lieu of an answer, “Also - what are you doing? Get up off the dirt, you’re wearing white for Christ’s sake.” Richie grins at him, standing up and brushing himself off before clambering down the ladder and shutting the hatchet. Eddie had moved back to his spot, crossed legged on the bench with a book in his hands. 

“Whatcha’ doing?” Richie asks, moving over to the hammock and setting himself down inside of it. 

Eddie shrugs, “Didn’t want to be around my mom after the appointment, so I came here.”

Richie hums, tugging at a piece of his hair, “I don’t blame you. What was it for? The appointment, I mean.”

“Just a check up. Told her I had to work on a project with Bev so I could come out.” 

“Bev?” Richie asks, “What, she’s not worried that’s an excuse to go tangle tongues, or whatever?” He thinks he’s probably asking something else, judging by the familiar way his chest lurches with envy at the thought. 

“God, no,” Eddie laughs, “It wouldn’t - um, no.” Eddie sort of snaps his mouth closed at that, turning towards Richie and eyeing him instead of his book. “Why are you here? Y’know, instead of out with the others?” 

“They’re busy today, I guess. And I didn’t want to go and do chores so I figured might as well waste some time around the good ol’ clubhouse.” Richie says lightly, instead of trying to unpack whatever Eddie had been getting at because there wasn’t a _ point. _“How’d you find your way here, anyway? We’ve only come down a few times now. I’m surprised you could find it.” 

Eddie shrugs, again, he seems to be good at that. “Good directional sense and photographic memory,” he hums, tapping at his temple. “Why, did you get lost?” 

“Maybe,” Richie mutters, and when Eddie laughs he adds, “Fuck off, man, we can’t all be gifted.” 

“Yeah, which is why you have top marks in calculus?” Eddie chides with a raise of his eyebrows. 

“Gifted with the brains, sure. Cursed with a whole lot of other shit.” 

“Is that so?”

“You don’t know the half of it, my man. Not at all.” Richie says, and it’s more honest then he would like to be but there’s nothing he can do about it. If he says it like a joke, with a smile on his face and a lilt to his voice, no one notices anyway. That’s the case with Eddie now, or at least Richie thinks it is. Even if Eddie’s eyes go soft and his brow furrows a little bit with what could be concern but is more likely confusion and that’s. It’s laughable, and a little comforting, that Richie can confuse Eddie too. Welcome to the club, Eds, in every sense of the word. 

They only sit in silence for a little while, and it’s not even silence, not really. Interrupted by bouts of small conversation about anything and everything. They talk about Derry, a lot. Pretty on the outside and foul on the inside, and the differences between it and New York. Eddie says New York is the opposite, in some ways. Pretty on the inside and disgusting on the outside. All grey and brown, wet streets and dirty alleyways aside from where it lights up at night. He says it’s still foul on the inside too, but not in the same way that Derry was. New York had bad people but it’s intentions were good - progressive and fast and always moving. Derry wasn’t like that. Derry had bad people and bad intentions and moved slowly. Derry felt like a different world compared to Eddie’s jittery description of the city. Trapped underwater, but it wasn’t the pale green dusty water of the Quarry or even the crisp cool blue sea on the coast of New York. It was - dirty. _ Filthy. _ So dark you couldn’t see yourself through it and covering the whole town, and in Derry you could either sink to the bottom or learn to breathe underwater, because there wasn’t any coming up for air until you left it. Richie assumes that’s why all the adults who had lived there since childhood were the way that they were, so accustomed to breathing as Derry had conformed them to that the idea that there _ was _anywhere else didn’t even exist. Richie can only hope that he doesn’t drown before he has the chance to taste the water somewhere it didn't sting your eyes and taste like poison sliding down your throat.

“Would you ever go back to New York?” Richie asks then, “After you graduate, I mean.” Richie doesn’t offer up the other half of that question, which is if Eddie would stay in Derry, and he doesn’t know if he doesn’t ask it because the idea of Eddie staying in Derry doesn’t exist anyway or if he’s just hoping it doesn’t. 

Eddie thinks for a moment, “Yeah. Yeah, I think I would. I’d go somewhere like that, at least.” 

“You like the big cities?” Richie asks. 

Eddie hums, “Not really, but small towns aren’t - they aren’t really meant for me, I don’t think. Big cities I can blend in, I can be who I am and change myself if I don’t like it, and no one would notice, y’know?” 

“I know,” Richie says, “I don’t think you’d blend in, though.” 

“No?”

“Nah, you’d - you’d catch eyes.” Richie mumbles, and it feels big. It feels like he’s admitting to something. “People would notice if you changed yourself, I would, anyway. That shouldn’t stop you from becoming who you want to be, though.” 

“You’d notice?” Eddie asks softly, and before Richie can stumble out an explanation Eddie’s speaking again, “What, we’re gonna move to a big city together?” And it’s - it’s a question that _ implies _something. But Eddie isn’t asking it like it’s funny, he seems serious. A little scared, even, the smirk he’s wearing like he’s trying to play it off isn’t very convincing. 

“I mean, we could.” Richie shrugs, like he’s nonchalant about it even though his brain is vibrating and the backs of his arms feel like their filled up with air. “Get the hell out of here, the day after graduation and just - just _ go. _To New York, or Chicago, maybe.” Eddie is watching him, careful and focused, and his eyes are searching Richie - like he’s trying to get Richie to make eye contact. He can’t though, because Richie isn’t brave. Or - he is, enough to say something like this but not enough to look at someone while he does like he means it. “All of us, I mean. The other Losers too. Share rent in some piece of shit apartment.” 

Eddie nods jerkily, “All of us, yeah. That - that could work.” And he sounds, well it’s an emotion Richie hasn’t yet heard in his voice and his brain supplies two words to describe it: Disheartened or Relieved, and they both cut at his chest in different ways. Eddie smiles, soft and slow, “Can you imagine that? All of us cramped inside one apartment?” 

“No,” Richie laughs, and it’s a lie. The answer and the laugh because, _ yes he can _ and _ yes he has_, and the laugh hurts when it forces its way out of his chest. “It’d be hectic, but it would be nice. To be around them all the time, I don’t-” And here it comes, the honesty again, “I don’t want to lose them, any of them. I know it’s stupid and it’s wishful thinking, but I think I could spend the rest of my life with it being just us.” 

“It isn’t stupid,” Eddie says, in that same soft tone, “It’s nice. I haven’t ever had friends like that, not until now. Never imagined myself doing stuff like that, I guess, but.” Eddie cuts himself off, a smile spreading over his cheeks, “Yeah, I could see that. It'd probably end with one of us burning the place down but, I could see it.” 

“What’s the fun in living with other people unless you start a fire every once in awhile, huh?” Richie smirks, because making a joke out of the whole thing felt better, safer, then whatever the hell it had been before. Admissions that said a lot more out in the open than they did hidden inside of Richie’s brain. Soft smiles that were probably second-nature to Eddie and tones Richie couldn’t decipher, all of which left him feeling spread out and flayed open. It’s better to turn everything that mattered into something that seemed like it didn’t, anyway. You’re less likely to get hurt that way. 

“Literally anything that _ isn’t _starting a fire is more fun than actually starting a fire, Rich.”

“Debatable.”

“It’s definitely not, but okay.” 

And that, to put it simply, had been that. They go back to sitting in silence that isn’t really silence, and Richie tries his best to stop replaying the last twenty minutes in his head. Eddie continues to read his book and Richie continues to look at Eddie and map the high points on his face like he won’t ever see him again. To be fair, he has a feeling like he won’t. There had to be a limit, when it came to crushes, right? A set amount of times where you could make yourself hopelessly obvious until they either humoured you or left you all together, and that number couldn’t be infinite. Be it for the sake of Richie’s sanity or Eddie’s comfort level, it couldn’t be infinite. He feels like he’s hit that limit and and sprinted past it already. Maybe it’s a cycle, an invisible barrier, and he’s hit it and come back around already - and he will continue to do so until it breaks and falls into something unrecognizable. 

Richie feels caught up in the idea that the future he had so quietly built in his head was now laying on the floor of the clubhouse, and now that it had been vocalised, it was in Eddie’s hands. No matter how far away it was, when the day comes Richie will go, he knows he will, and Eddie could either follow him or go his own way and it had been _ okay. _ Eddie not going with him, it had been okay in his head. Something he could deal with. It doesn’t feel like that anymore. It feels too much like a plan, or an offer, and if Eddie chooses to separate himself from them, it’s no longer something he _ could _ deal with but something he’d _ have _to deal with. He knows realistically he has time, more time than he’d like to admit, until that day becomes a reality, but it still feels too close for comfort. Richie wishes that there was a function of time he could master to slow it all down, but there isn’t. No matter how good he gets at fucking calculus, time will continue to pass, wrecking everything in its wake, and Richie will have to keep picking up the pieces. 

It’s as he’s thinking about all of the moments in which time has fucked him over, it decides to throw him for a loop once again. 

“Hey,” Eddie is saying, suddenly standing at the front of the hammock where Richie is sprawled across, “Switch with me, my back is fucking _ killing. _” 

Richie rolls his eyes, “Dude, you were here for like, three hours before I even came. It’s not my fault you didn’t stake your claim first.” 

“First of all, it was _ not _three hours. Try fifteen fucking minutes, asshole.” Eddie spits, “Plus, verbal agreement, remember? Ten minutes, motherfucker. Get up.”

“I’ll show you a motherfucker.” 

“Yeah? I’ll call Sonia down here.” 

“Is _ that _your mom’s name? Wow, she’s never told me. Usually uses an alias.” Richie shrugs, grinning at Eddie. 

“Oh, I’m sure,” Eddie scoffs, “Stop changing the subject, you were _ there _ when we all agreed that each person gets ten minutes in the hammock. That’s what a verbal agreement _ means. _ Your ass has been in there for twenty minutes, it’s my turn.”

“Fuck your verbal agreement.” Richie goads, wiggling in his spot to emphasize it. 

“You think you just get to _ overwrite the law,_ or whatever? Guess what, you don’t! I made the law.” Eddie punctuates this with a shove at Richie’s shoulder.

Richie nearly topples over, body shaking with laughter. “Call the cops then, asshole.” He says, once he’s gained his balance.

Eddie is grinning at him, eyes bright and filled with merit, and he doesn’t say anything, for a moment. Tugging his bottom lip between his teeth and shifting on his feet, outweighing something in his head. More pros and more cons, probably, of what would happen if he shoved Richie out of the hammock. Richie knows he won’t do it, he knows Eddie wouldn’t risk him getting bruised and scraped for a seat, but he kind of hopes he would anyway. 

Eddie doesn’t push him out of the hammock, though. Instead he throws himself inside of it, knobby knees and elbows and a foot in Richie’s face and it’s - it isn’t ever what Richie expects. Nothing is, when it comes to Eddie. And granted he should be grateful because he always expects the worst, but it throws him off kilter. It spins him one hundred and eighty degrees around what he thinks is going to happen and proves to Richie that once again, he doesn’t know a damn thing about Eddie Kaspbrak. He doesn’t know how to deal with him, either, because suddenly Eddie’s legs are tangled up with his and Eddie’s head is thrown back in high-pitched laughter and it’s so much more than it is, in Richie’s head. It isn’t something he can tell himself to stop reading into because there isn’t anything to pick apart, it’s just Eddie and it’s just sharing a hammock. Only that it isn’t, not for Richie at least, and he’s beginning to worry about how much of himself he’ll lose trying to keep everything he feels inside.

He doesn’t do anything about it though, and instead Richie finds himself taking every single bit that he can get. It’s greedy and it’s anything but okay and it’s probably going to leave him hollowed out and unapproachable by the end of things, but he does it anyway. Richie allows their knees to knock together and Eddie’s foot to smack his face and his own hand to rest on Eddie’s ankle. Because he can, because he _ wants _to. Because he’s sure, when Eddie inevitably leaves him high and dry, be it ten years down the line or next summer, it won’t matter anyway. Regardless of when it happens, Eddie’s name will eventually fade and he’ll be nothing but a childhood crush, and an hour in a shared hammock may be a memory he keeps or it may be one he loses, but it won’t change him. 

They leave the Barrens together again, Eddie on foot and Richie walking his bike, and it's familiar and it's new all at once. They pass over the Kissing Bridge, and Eddie mutters something about it being_ fucked up_, which is new, and they sit in heavy silence until they get over it, which isn't. And when Richie stops in front of Eddie's house to wave him off, he pulls him into a hug like he had before. Eddie does the same thing he did last time, which is hold on just as tight, laugh, pull at Richie's hair a bit, and then leave. It isn't simple and it isn't easy and it's still the best Richie has ever felt about anything in his life before, and he knows it can't last. They can't go any further than they have now, friends who hug and friends who lean into each other and friends who share fucking _hammocks _together, apparently. 

As Richie bikes home he weighs his options out in his head, measuring the pros and cons of each and trying desperately to gauge how much time he has left before he has to untangle himself from Eddie completely, at least for a while, until everything stopped feeling like it meant more than it did. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alrighty.. what did we think? i quite liked this chapter, more than i did the last one, anyway. i'm sure that'll pass though, lol. okay! it is four am and i am very sleepy, so goodnight and/or good morning, and thank you so much for reading. you can find me on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/ridtheblues) as im there 90% of my time. (also, if you want to leave any comments, feel free but not inclined to do so.)


	3. chapter three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We have been very brave, we have wanted to know the worst, wanted the curtain to be lifted from our eyes. This dream going on with all of us in it.  
\- Snow and Dirty Rain, Richard Siken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *UPDATE* IM WRITING A SEQUEL! just a oneshot, a little 5 + 1 for no reason other than i spent too long on this to not see my boys in an actual relationship! keep an eye out for that! 
> 
> LONG SAPPY NOTE AT THE END! IM SO SORRY FOR THE WAIT! I CANT BELIEVE IT'S DONE!  
(ps. the mixtape richie makes eddie can be found here)  
\- spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2WlsJQa4SBASiWyAY4ohBM?si=W48Yyv2RQw6DkChBCCdGpw  
applemusic: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/teen-age-riot-mixtape/pl.u-RRbVVD7s35vNajo
> 
> this entire fic is dedicated to paige and kaley most of all, who sat there these past five months as i ranted and raved about how much this took out of me. it wouldn't be here without them.

_ Spring, 1993 _

Three weeks later, on Richie’s eighteenth birthday, he wakes up to a car in the driveway. Well, that’s a vague way to put it, there are always cars in the driveway. Two, to be exact, but now there’s a _ third. _ It’s a piece of shit, a second-hand Buick Reatta in dusty silver, but it’s _ his. _ Richie’s parents had walked him down the stairs with their hands over each eye and out into the chill of early March before unveiling it, sitting in the drive with a bow on top. Not like the ones you see in those car commercials, Richie doesn’t even know where to _ get _one of those, but a small bow, like you’d use to decorate the top of a Christmas present. Metallic green and gold against matte grey, and it’s perfect. Richie had all but victory-danced on the front lawn at nine in the morning on a Saturday, instead turning around and wrapping his mom and dad into a bone-crushing hug. His dad had patted his back, handing him the keys and telling him to, “Go nuts,” which was probably not something he should’ve said to Richie, of all people, but Richie had done just that. 

The car has two doors but five seats total, and was slick grey on the outside and all red and beige on the inside. A radio in the front, a new one that is definitely not from the year the car itself was built and shiny mirrors. It also had a chip in the right bumper and the leather in the backseat was cracked and a little ripped on the sides, but it smelled like new car: Pine Sol and all purpose Windex. Which was probably not the actual scent of New Car, but Richie didn’t really have anything else to compare it to. 

Richie slides into the driver's seat, dressed still in his blue and white pajama pants and grey Derry High sweatshirt, and drives to Stan’s. He’d debated going to Eddie’s, but he figured the first time he introduced himself to the infamous Sonia Kaspbrak he shouldn’t be honking his horn and blasting shitty pop-rock from his radio. So instead, he curves out of his driveway and makes his way to Cherry Lane, buzzing the entire time. It’s different and also shockingly the same, driving through Derry as opposed to biking. It’s the same town, the same streets and the same shops and the same sky, even, brightening as the sun rises in the air, but it’s also not. For once, Richie finally feels like getting out is possible. No longer this far away never-ending stream of one-days and what-ifs, biking to the town border but never crossing it, running fast but never fast _ enough _to escape Derry. Now, he could. He could leave today, if he wanted to. A note in the kitchen and all of the money in his piggy-bank stuffed inside his pocket and a duffle-bag over his shoulder. He won’t do it, but having the option is nice. 

He pulls up to the front of Stanley’s house, and he does honk his horn and he does turn the radio up, but only because Stan’s parents were used to it by now. That doesn’t stop his mom from opening up the front door, though. Clad in a furry pink bathrobe and slippers, face set and hard before she notices Richie, and she brightens. 

“Well, good morning Richie,”

“Top of the mornin’ to ya lass!”

“Your parents get a new car?” Andrea calls from the doorway.

“It’s mine, can you believe it?” Richie smiles back. 

She shakes her head, crossing her arms, “That they’re giving you free reign of the streets? Not a _ chance._” Andrea turns around then, calling up the stairs for Stan, probably, before facing him again. “Keep it down, would you? Not everyone is up this early.” 

“Sorry, Mrs. Uris,” Richie says, sickeningly sweet, and reaches over to lower the volume. 

“No worries,” She smiles, “Happy Birthday, Richie.” She goes back inside as Stan bounds out, eyes tired and a nest of curls on his head. He stares at the car for a second, until it registers and he smiles slow, placing both hands on his hips. 

“Well, well,” Stanley says, “I see we’ve got a new driver on the roads today, huh? Killed any rodents yet?” 

“Only a few,” Richie says easily, “They’re in the trunk, I brought them with in case you guys needed breakfast.” 

Stan laughs and makes his way towards the car, leaning both of his elbows on the driver’s side window and peering in, “It’s nice,” he says with an approving nod, “Don’t know if you’ll keep it that way, but it sure as hell could be worse.” 

“Yeah, yeah, badger my cleaning habits all you want. I’m on a high, my man. You could punch me in the face and I’d probably hug you for it.” Richie says.

“You want to test that theory?” Stan asks, faking like he’s going to and then spilling over into laughter again. “This is weird. You driving, having your own car. Feels like yesterday you were getting peanut butter in my hair at recess.” 

“I know,” Richie concedes, grinning, “So, what do ya’ say? Wanna go on a joyride?” 

“Please, get in a car with you before you’ve even brushed your teeth? I can smell your breath from here.” 

“That’s just what the car smells like.” 

“Then I’m _ definitely _not getting in,” Stan smiles, reaching over and squeezing Richie’s shoulder, “Pick me up at seven, yeah? We can go to your party together, unless you forgot that was happening.” 

Richie feigns hurt, “Me? Forgetting my _ own _party? It’s like you don’t even know me.” 

“How I wish that were true, Trashmouth. With any luck I’ll forget you by the time I’m eighty.” 

“Are you assuming I won’t be living in your basement by then? Bold.”

“Yeah, shut the fuck up,” Stan laughs, pushing away from him and moving slowly to his front door. He turns around then, waving at Richie before cupping his hands over his mouth. “Happy Birthday, by the way! Try not to die before tonight.” 

“Only for you, Stanny, only for you!” Richie calls back, shifting the car back into drive and pulling out. 

He doesn’t drive home right away, instead moving through Derry slowly, a nostalgic way of retracing his steps. Richie drives through downtown, past the Aladdin and the shitty corner diner, softly eyeing every place he and his friends had made their claims over the years. He drives over the Kissing Bridge and feels a sense of power for doing so. Crushing every single nasty carving that made his skin crawl under his wheels. He drives past the library too, and wonders if time is cyclical enough that wishing the Richie who had given a piece of himself up there two years ago well is going to change anything. He doesn’t feel that piece return itself to him, but he knows by now change isn’t something you can measure by how you feel. Richie does feel better driving past it though, better than he has any other time before, so he guesses in some ways he’s grown. 

Richie drives around Derry until the sun is beating down on the roof of his car, and he can feel it on his fingertips as he dances them through the air. For the first time in awhile, he feels whole. 

\--------------------------

At 10 after 7 o’clock, Richie’s got Stan in his car and they drive together to pick up Beverly. Stan has his feet kicked up on the dashboard, clean white Chucks against plastic and leather, and he holds his bag close to his chest. Stan won’t tell him what’s in it, but based on the way Richie had heard glass clang against glass when he had slid into the passenger seat, he’s pretty sure he knows. 

They get to Bev’s in record time, Richie nearly scraping the side of his car on the curb as he pulls up and honking his horn thrice before Stan moves his hand away from the wheel. She busts out the doorway, all glitter, emerald green and black and smelling of sweet perfume. She hugs Richie tight when he steps out of the car to lean his seat forward and let her climb in, pressing a kiss to his cheek before she does. 

“Sweet ride, Rich,” Beverly says as she rubs Stan’s shoulder as a greeting. 

“Thank you, Miss Scarlett,” Richie croons as he buckles his seatbelt, grinning at her in the rearview mirror. “I must say, you look _ dashing. _”

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” She jokes, before snapping her fingers and reaching inside of her crossbody, “Before I forget! Your first present of the night,” 

Richie grabs the tape from her outstretched hand, glancing at the cover that reads; Richie’s Birthday Jam’s! in hot pink bubble lettering and yellow stars. “Bev, it’s like you read my mind.” 

“Had a feeling you’d be getting a car this year, I figured I might as well give you your first official soundtrack.” She says with a shrug, smiling to him a little secretly. “Happy Birthday, Richie Bitch.”

“Thanks, Bev,” Richie says kindly, popping the tape into the deck and letting it ring out. 

“No worries,” Bev says, “Hey, Stan, you got the stuff?” 

Stan slaps the front of his bag with earnest, “Almost got caught snatching it, but it’s all here.”

“Marvelous.”

“I don’t know why you guys are acting like it’s some big secret,” Richie snorts as he puts the car in drive, “It’s obviously booze.” 

“Ah, yes,” Stan says wisely, “It’s the _ type _ of booze, Richie, _ that’s _the secret.” 

“I see, alright, keep your secrets from the birthday boy, if that’s how it has to be.” Richie pulls up at a stop sign before glancing at Bev in the rearview mirror again, “Hey, who else needs a ride?” 

“Eddie does,” Bev says, “Ben’s dad is driving him and Bill over.” 

“To the Kaspbrak residence we go, then.” Richie says, putting too much pressure on the gas then he needs to, probably, and it lurches Stan back into his seat. “Sorry. Hey, you think Eddie’s mom wants to come instead of him? I need some sweet birthday lovin’ from-”

“Beep beep, Richie.” Stan and Bev call simultaneously, high fiving each other even though Stan doesn’t take his eyes from the front of the car and Bev is looking at her fingernails. 

\--------------------------

When they pull up to Eddie’s house, Richie doesn’t honk the horn. He gets out of his car and walks to the front door, ringing the doorbell _ once _ even though his fingers itch to press it incessantly, and he waits. Richie’s palms are sweating and his knees are bouncing up and down, which is _ stupid_, he knows it is, but from all the wonderful things he’s heard about Eddie’s mom he thinks he’s got the right to be a little nervous. He adjusts his button-up, thick pastel stripes in blue, purple and pink underneath a light denim jacket that matches his jeans, and pushes his glasses up his nose. 

Eddie is the one who opens the door, not his mom, but it still sort of throws Richie off his game. That isn’t new, Eddie always does, but it’s enough to make him fumble. Richie has a split second to take Eddie in as he steps out of the front door with his head turned back, calling out a stumbled rendition of a goodbye to his mom. That split second feels longer than it should, but that’s just Eddie in a nutshell. All encompassing and submerging, in a way. Eddie’s got a bright orange polo on, long sleeved, and that’s all encompassing too. His hair is tousled and he smells like pine and juniper leaves, and Richie sort of feels like if he inhales too hard he’ll pass out. 

And then Eddie’s in front of him, arms outstretched and grinning wide, “Rich!” He says, pulling Richie into a hug. “Happy Birthday,”

“Thanks, Eds,” Richie murmurs, wrapping his arms around him. He feels the warmth of Eddie’s body against his, the press of his shoulders underneath Richie’s forearms before he untangles himself from Eddie first. It hurts to do, but he figures he may as well have some practice in doing so. He knows it’s bigger than that, that untangling himself from Eddie couldn’t just be literal - touching him less and hugging him for shorter periods of time - that it had to be more. Spending less time with him and talking to him less, probably, and even though the idea sucked it was the right thing to do. It wasn’t fair to keep bringing Eddie closer when Eddie didn’t _ know _the way it made Richie feel. Richie knew that it would only mean he’d have to push him back with more force. For Eddie’s sake, Richie should pull away slowly.

Eddie preens when Richie shows him the car, smiling approvingly and skirting around it, nodding his head. He doesn’t even put up a fuss about the state of it, either, when he gets inside. Just accepts the ruffle Bev gives to his curls and buckles himself in. 

“So,” Eddie starts, “Where are we going, anyway?”

“Mike’s, he’s got this whole outhouse at the farm,” Bev says.

“Oh shit, you haven’t been there before, huh?” Richie asks, turning around to glance at Eddie as he puts the car into drive.

“Eyes on the road,” Eddie mutters, nearly second nature, “No, I haven’t. Is anyone else gonna be there?” 

“Nah, just the seven of us. Unless Bill tried to spread the word at school yesterday, but even if he did, the chance that anyone actually shows up are like, _ not _high.” Stan says. 

Richie snorts. “Fuck you, I’m not popular enough?” 

“Not by a long shot, Rich,” Stan says. 

“It’s going to be like this all night with the two of them, isn’t it?” Eddie asks, directing his question to Beverly. 

“Oh yeah,” Bev nods, “You’ll get used to it.” 

Richie shrugs, turns up the volume on the radio, letting the sounds of Bev’s tape ring through his ears. It’s more his style then the tapes his dad used to make for him, all Pixies and New-Order, but it’s the same idea. It’s still a soundtrack of memories. Something to - a few years down the line - assign to something that decides to stick around. Richie knows realistically you don’t get to remember everything that matters, don’t get to hold on to every moment that feels like it changed you as a person. Not really, anyway, not arcades or living rooms or shared hammocks - instead clips of years passed like a supercut when you close your eyes. But sometimes, all it takes for a glimpse at something bigger than a moment but smaller than a significance is the starting chords to a song that played while it occurred. 

Richie can see it, if he squints. Driving in his car still but through a city, and there’s no one next to him anymore. The radio plays the first few notes of Fine Time and he’d think: _ This song played on my eighteenth birthday. _ And get a flash to this very moment, and if by then his friend's names and faces are nothing but letters and smudges, at least he’d know he had it good. For a little while, at least.

\--------------------------

They get to Mike’s house eventually, pulling up in the dirt road. The lights to the outhouse are on, spilling through the windows and casting the surrounding areas in orange light. Richie hops out of the car, stretching his arms above his head until his bones pop, and starts to walk toward the door. 

As soon as Mike opens the sliding glass door Richie is enveloped into a tight hug, only growing tighter as Ben and Bill join in. It’s accompanied by one too many back slaps but it’s filled with emotion, giddy happiness and merit, and Richie grins into Mike’s shoulder and tugs his arms around Ben and Bill’s respective waists. 

“Happy Birthday, you p-piece of shit,” Bill laughs against him. 

“Thanks, Big Bill,” Richie grins.

From then on it’s a mess of limbs and stumbling sentences as the rest of them gather into the outhouse. It’s all warmth, red lampshades and orange carpets and sweet acoustic guitars playing from the record player. Mike had taken the liberty of decorating it, blue and green balloons and white streamers, a flimsy metallic silver sign that reads; “Happy Birthday,” with the T missing. It’s messy and it’s second-hand and it’s everything Richie could ever ask for, a lot like the rest of them. 

Ben unveils a box of cupcakes, cheap and too-sweet from the market, yellow cake and chocolate icing and one candle stuck out from the top, and lights it up before telling Richie to make a wish. Richie doesn’t know where the limit starts or ends when it comes to that, making a wish, but he does his best to ask for something attainable. A shitty apartment on the lower-east side of somewhere, cramped with the seven of them inside, and maybe that’s asking for something bigger than it is - be it freedom or contentedness, but it’s what he wants. To be exactly who he is somewhere far away from here, no longer tampered down by Derry where everything that makes him colorful has turned into grey. And he wants them, all of them, for the rest of his life. Which is selfish, and it’s unrealistic, he knows all of that and wants it anyway, which is maybe the bravest thing he’s ever done. 

“What’d you wish for, Rich?” Eddie asks.

“Nothing,” Richie says.

They do gifts next, because Richie is impatient and also bad at receiving things, and no matter how small they are Richie still blushes and he still mumbles out variations of _ thank you. _

Ben got him a myriad of little things, a key chain with his name on it and The Cure's new record among them. Bev hands him a pack of Marlboros, a neon green lighter and two shirts she bought from the thrift shop and personalized herself. One is tie-dye, red and yellow and green and blue, and the other is white and embroidered with little tokens. Flowers and peace signs and initials, all accentuated by the number seven woven in. Stan gives him a scrapbook - filled with pictures and notes and Bill’s drawings, flowers pressed between the pages. Mike forks over three comic books and a miniature photo album, packed with polaroids of all of them that Richie doesn’t remember him taking. There’s photos of them at the clubhouse, at the Quarry and in the arcade too. Solo photos of each of them as well, even Eddie, autographed on the back with scribbled notes in smudged sharpie. Bill’s gift was three books, three different genres all of which Richie had seen the films for and loved immensely. The Shining is among them, and suddenly he’s back in Ben’s living room three years ago. It’s only for a second, a flash of a memory, but it warms his chest. Each book starts with a dedication in soft-penciled lettering that he knows he’ll read over and over again. 

Eddie’s last, and he seems shy as he hands Richie a brown paper gift bag with light yellow tissue paper sticking out from the top. Like the rest of them, there are little things, trivial things, added onto to something bigger and more meaningful. A certain way to make it all feel a little less like an ending. Richie knows that’s a bit melodramatic, but it still feels like the last chapter of growing up. Come summertime he’ll be leaving Derry. And so will they, probably, but it might not be to follow him. Seven Losers spread across a map, tied to each other by a string that gets more strained and more frayed the further they stretch it, until eventually it breaks. 

In Eddie’s bag there are three things: An empty yellow journal, a snowglobe that reads Derry, Maine, - something Richie didn’t even know anyone made until now - and a book of postcards. There’s one for every state, glossy photos of landmarks and names in colorful cursive, but the one for Maine has been ripped out and taped to the front. The photo itself is less impressive than the others, as Maine tends to be in comparison to anywhere else, just a picture of a birds-eye view, streets and trees and buildings he can’t make out. On the back, there’s a note. Richie reads it and reads it again, taking in Eddie’s neat, small handwriting. “_Send me one for every place you go,"_

And it feels - it feels like a closing. For the most part. Some form of painful acceptance in a few things. First being that Eddie probably wasn’t going to go with him, which made sense. Richie couldn’t say he would move across the country with six people he’d only met two months ago either, but to lose him would hurt just as bad as it would to lose any of the others. And Richie feels acceptance for two other things simultaneously in himself. He does have a crush on Eddie, and it isn’t big news but there wasn’t any denying it anymore, either. It would be fine to admit it if it didn’t also mean that Richie had to let go, as soon as possible. He can’t stop having a crush if he spends his time with Eddie like he has been, and he also can’t carry it across the country with him, so something has to give. And it’s no one's responsibility to do that but Richie’s, with this. It’s no one else's fault that his brain and his heart worked the way they did, and it’s high time he has to deal with the consequences. 

They can come later, though. It all can. Because right now Richie has wrapped Eddie into his arms, just as he had with all of the others - save for the ache in his chest, that’s Eddie-Centric - and he allows himself to be greedy with what Eddie allows. It isn’t the first time but he’s dead set on it being the last, so Richie inhales Eddie’s sent and he feels the warmth of his skin beneath his polo and he revels in how it feels when Eddie laughs against him, and he lets Eddie pull away first, this time. 

He looks at Stan, who is watching him a little wearily, and nods, short and jerky. He doesn’t know if Stan gets the message, doesn’t really know what the message _ is_, but Stan’s eyes soften. Richie looks at him a short moment longer, claps his hands together loud enough he flinches, and says, with as much feeling as he can muster, “Get me a drink, Stanny. I do believe this party has only just begun.” 

\--------------------------

Richie doesn’t know what the hell is in the canteen Stan had brought from his house, but he is off his ass in a few chugs. It had been crystal clear and bitter, burning it’s way down his throat and directly into his liver, probably, but he felt sun-soaked and dizzy with it. 

They’d danced for a bit, all of them together, as soon as the alcohol set into their bones and they slinked around each other, loose-limbed and laughing to the steadily increasing music from Mike’s record player. Richie thinks the rest of them are still dancing, but he can’t be bothered to lift his head from the spot he’d collapsed on when he got tired. That had turned out to be the dirty carpet in the middle of the room, and Eddie had followed suit. They’re sprawled out with their shoulders touching, and Richie feels - he feels really fucking good. He’s eighteen and he’s got his own car out front, he’s got his six best friends surrounding him, and a ticket out of Derry as soon as the sun rises on June 10th. It’s not an actual ticket, but more of a metaphorical one. Metaphorical sounds weird in his head the more times he thinks it. What the fuck was a metaphor, anyway? 

“Bullshit,” Richie mutters aloud.

“What is?” Eddie slurs from next to him, turning his cheek so he’s looking at Richie. 

Eddie looks gorgeous, hazy and flushed and sleepy-eyed, and Richie really wants to do something stupid. Like touch his hair, or feel if his face is warm, or kiss him, maybe. He could do it too, blame it on something that it wasn’t. Say it was the liquor or joke around and say it’s his birthday present, maybe even kiss the rest of them quick and play it off like it’s nothing. Richie won’t do it, because it isn’t nothing and he isn’t brave, he only wishes that was enough to stop him from wanting to do it anyway.

“Hm?” Richie asks instead. Eddie had said something, right?

Eddie snorts, covering his face, “You said ‘bullshit,’. What’s bullshit?” 

Richie makes a considering noise in the back of his throat, trying to remember, “Oh. Metaphors. Metaphors are bullshit.” 

“Ah, I see,” Eddie nods, rolling over so he’s facing Richie on his side now, head tucked into his elbow, “You writing poetry in your head, Tozier? Maybe a ballad?” 

“Yeah,” Richie sighs, and Eddie’s eyebrows rise like it isn’t what he was expecting. Which to be fair, Richie wasn’t expecting himself to say it either. Maybe people were wrong about alcohol, maybe it wasn’t Liquid Courage and instead Liquid Honesty. Either way, Richie should be more careful. He’s got a few secrets that only require a little bit of both to come out. 

“Yeah?” Eddie confirms, “About what?” 

Richie waves a hand in the air, acting like he’s trying to remember instead of giving himself something to do in order to avoid saying _ you. _“Life.” Is what he decides on. 

“_Life_.” Eddie echoes, “Well, what’s the conclusion?” 

“For?”

“Your poem about life. Your _ metaphor _ for life. What is it?”

Richie thinks for a moment. About teenage-owned communal grounds and clubhouses, libraries that aren’t monsters but books that are, songs and movies and memories and boys that you can’t have. It’s all times that things happened and the timing in which they did and Richie can’t control anything. Richie can memorize the functions of time but he can’t bend it to his will. He doesn’t know how to have crushes and he doesn’t know how to talk about things that matter, but he’s got a knack for math and a photographic memory, and he knows that in the long run you can’t hold on to everything that changes you, you can only hope it’s for the better. 

“I think that life is full of things you aren’t meant to handle well.” Richie says, and he can’t say that it conveys his thoughts but he hopes it does anyway.

“What do you mean?” Eddie asks. 

“Like, everything that happens to make you who you are, they all feel like the end of the world when they happen. But-” Richie fumbles, “But they aren’t. The end of the world, y’know? Because the end of the world can only happen once. Change, though, change doesn’t happen only one time. It happens because you had to go through something hard in order to do it. And change is apart of life, isn’t it? If you handle everything easily, you can’t move from who you are.” 

Eddie hums, and his eyes do that thing where the seem to be digging into Richie’s, looking for something. He’s smiling to himself, pleased, and his eyes trail down Richie’s face. Richie would like believe Eddie looks at his lips for a moment, but he knows better by now that Eddie’s probably looking at the zit on his chin. 

“I like it. It’s not a metaphor, or a poem,” Eddie punctuates the jabs with a grin, “But I like it. You’re really smart, Richie,” 

“Psh,” Richie waves, “You are.”

“You’re drunk.” Eddie says, laughing. 

“So are you, asshole,” Richie says back. 

“Yeah,” Eddie’s laugh peeters off, until it’s an inhale of breath and then a sigh. “Yeah. I should - you want another drink?” 

Richie furrows his eyebrows. He probably should say no. It wasn’t a good idea to get any further intoxicated than he was now, it’s - it’s hard already. Feeling loose and free and unafraid around Eddie, like he can say or do anything he wants to regardless of the consequences. When, in reality, there are a lot of them. 

“I’d take another,” Richie says instead. 

\--------------------------

Three shots later, Richie finds himself on the couch in the outhouse with True Romance playing on the square television screen in front of him. It’s grainy, and the sound keeps cutting out, but most of them are too far gone to care. Even Mike and Bev, who don’t drink, went out back to share a hit or two off of something that _ definitely _wasn’t a cigarette. Richie had given them a hard time about not sharing, but all Eddie had to do was make one quick off-hand comment that getting cross-faded wasn’t the best idea for Richie to shut up. 

He feels like the inside of his body is moving in waves, whenever he stands or switches positions it sort of feels like being tickled, and Richie keeps laughing to himself because of it. The rest of them crowd around the couch, Bill and Stan on his left and Eddie propped up on the arm rest, Ben on the floor between the spaces of their legs. Mike and Beverly come in eventually, red-eyed and smelling sharp, and Richie loves them both so fiercely it kind of hurts. He catalogues each and every one of them, although they’re so bright in his drunk haze they smear and wiggle like heat on a road, and categorizes the love he feels as best he can. It feels the same for every single one of them, hot and shining in his chest, and peaks a little when he looks at Eddie. Which isn’t fair, and he pleads with his heart silently to make it go away, but it doesn’t. Eddie still makes his chest throb and his head spin, even sober, and now it’s intensified.

He stops looking at Eddie when his eyes start to burn and faces the television, and starts to remind himself of everything he cannot have. It’s therapeutic, in a way, more mature than Richie has ever allowed himself to be about a lot of things in the past. Mostly, it’s understanding that being all grown up isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. There’s too much clarity in that thought, more than Richie thinks he should allow himself to have only twenty hours into being 18, but it feels truer than anything. Maybe that’s because you don’t become an adult just because you Become An Adult. Richie knows that, knows that he’s done and avoided things in his life so far that other kids either haven’t done or haven’t avoided. He knows that in some ways he’s been forced to grow up a little faster than his friends, even. Either way, a lot of the time maturity and age have nothing to do with one another. 

Growing up didn’t mean freedom, and it didn’t mean immediate happiness and it didn’t mean anything got any easier, either. A lot of it is acknowledging that everything you wanted your life to be when you finally crossed that line you probably wouldn’t get. Which seems fair, you get to be a new person but you don’t get to keep the people who shaped you into who you were before. You don’t get to keep the people who made you brave enough to do it. But you do get out - and that’s something. That’s everything Richie has wanted for as long as he can remember, anyway. 

It doesn’t change the fact that honesty hurts when you have to use it against yourself, and it cuts deep that the life Richie had planned for himself and in turn his six friends probably wouldn’t be a reality. It’s childish, to believe he’d get to keep them forever, but it’s maturity when he understands that it wouldn’t be fair to steal them away from anything else - be it new friends or careers or fresh starts. He thinks he’ll miss them everyday, though, when that time does come. Richie briefly wants to go back in time to change his wish to something a little more achievable, which is that he never forgets their names or their faces. Fuck a little apartment on the lower east side of somewhere. He just wants to remember Bev’s hair and Stan’s smirk. It doesn’t matter. He can’t control time and he knows now that realistically he won’t get either wish, and it still hurts and it’s still honesty. 

In Richie’s head he sections off what’s attainable and what he can’t touch, and it goes like this: He can’t have all of his friends for the rest of his life, but he can have the next four months. He can’t hold them up in a little apartment but he can get out of Derry. He can’t be with Eddie the way he wants to be but he can say he had the chance of knowing him. He can’t remember every moment that’s ever felt like it’s mattered but he can hold on to who it makes him. 

Richie thinks about that last one for a minute, and wages a quick war with himself. He’s drunk and dizzy and a little sad, and suddenly guilty. Guilty because the understanding that he may never speak to any of them again come next summer has presented him with a terrifying bit of information. That being, they don’t really know him. That’s dramatic, try again. 

They don’t know that Richie’s queer. And just like a lot of things tonight it isn’t information he didn’t already know but it’s something that feels revolutionary. It feels dirty and loud, trapped underneath his skin. Having a secret kept from them feels so wrong and alien suddenly that he understands what he had been getting at that day at the clubhouse. That eventually with some people having secrets felt worse than the fear of how they would react to them. He thinks he’s hit that barrier now. And yeah, fuck it, it’s probably the alcohol and it’s probably the fact that he feels a little nostalgic and also like he’ll wake up tomorrow in a bed in Los Angeles twenty five years old from a very vivid memory-like dream, but fuck it.

Richie’s chest lights up and his head goes kind of airy, and he sits up so suddenly Bill turns to look at him concerned. 

“R-Richie? You okay?” 

“Yeah,” Richie croaks, nodding too fast. 

“Are you gonna be sick?” Eddie asks, and Richie whips his head so fast to look at him it spins and he has to clench his eyes shut. 

“No,” Richie says, opening his eyes when the room feels like it’s stopped whirling, “Well, maybe later, but no.” Eddie doesn’t look convinced. 

Stan places a hand on his shoulder, “What’s wrong, Rich?”

“Nothing it’s-” He cuts himself off, taking a deep breath. “Mike, can you pause the T.V? I gotta - I have to tell you guys something.” Mike eyes him warily, glancing between Bill and Stan before nodding. He grabs the remote and presses the power button, and the lack of noise it makes sort of feels offensive. Richie’s about to spill his guts, the television could at least have the decency to express some sort of moral support. That thought makes him feel crazy enough that he laughs, face falling into the palms of his hands. 

“Richie?” Bev asks, her voice so soft and concerned it makes him laugh a little harder. 

“I’m fine,” Richie says, but it’s muffled by his fingers. He sits up again and looks at her. “I’m fine, really,” No one says anything, and Richie knows that he has to talk. That’s new, knowing that it’s his turn to vocalize something - or that the silence in the room was set by him. It’s weird that he’s about to say something that matters and it’s weird that he thinks saying anything feels weird at all. It’s all weird. Tonight is a conglomeration of all things new and weird. He’s too drunk for this. 

Richie takes a deep breath, begs with himself internally to either brush it off or not pussy out, lets the latter win, and wonders if honesty hurts just as bad when you use it on someone else. Well, there isn’t any use in wondering. He’s about to find out. 

“I’m queer,” Richie says, and it’s - well. It’s simultaneously nothing and everything. It’s three and a half years of knowing but also a lifetime of explanations, and it’s also just two words. It’s just two words, which feels a little fucking ordinary considering how big it actually is. But it’s also comforting. Words mean everything and they also mean nothing. Richie knows that better than anyone. “Like, I like men. Also maybe women but that’s - that’s a hard maybe. Like not even really a maybe and more of a not but. Who knows? Nose knows. Um. Maybe I’ll find a chick I like when I’m older - aside from all your mothers and sisters, of course - but right now it’s pretty exclusively guys. So.” Richie has to take a big gulp of air when he finally finishes, squeezing his eyes shut and waiting. He definitely got a little rambly towards the end of that. Whatever. 

“Richie,” Ben says, and Richie opens his eyes to look at him. Ben is smiling, warm and proud, and Richie feels a weight removed from his shoulders. Richie smiles back, because Ben’s grin is sort of contagious, and waits. “That’s - I’m really glad you told us. I’m proud of you.” 

“Thanks,” Richie says softly, and he sort of feels like he wants to cry. He looks at Bill and Stan now, and searches their twin faces of shock. They don’t look angry, or disgusted, so that’s something. They both sit there for a moment, staring at him, and Richie feels like the seconds tick by in slow motion. 

Bill breaks it first, pulling Richie into a hug so tight and powerful it knocks the air out of him. Stan joins behind Bill, wrapping his arms around the two of them. The angle is awkward and uncomfortable and when Richie buries his face in Bill’s shoulder and wraps his own arms where they can reach Stan, he does cry. It pushes out of him like a laugh, and it probably was at first, but it trickles into a full body sob and he can feel tears leak out of his eyes. His glasses crunch against his face but he’s pressed too tight to remove them. He feels - torn open and relieved. And it’s all of that stress and all of that worry removed from him so quickly he feels hollow. But it’s the good kind of hollow, if that exists. The kind that’s there to give space to something better. 

Bill pulls away and holds him at his shoulders, and Stan gets up to squish Riche in the middle of them. “Th-that was hard to say, yeah?” Bill asks softly. Richie sniffles, rolls his eyes at himself before removing his glasses, and nods. “Thank you. For t-telling us.” 

“No need to thank me,” Richie says, and it’s stuffed up and croaky but it’s still true. 

“Shut up,” Stan says softly from his right, wrapping himself around Richie’s back so he can hug him from behind. “I’m proud of you. I really want to make a joke about you keeping a secret for as long as you did but it feels inappropriate.” 

Richie snorts, leaning into him, “It was so fucking long, I think I went crazy.” 

Stan laughs against him, “You going crazy has nothing to do with it.” 

Bev is next, and she’s up from her seat and pulling Richie up from the couch into her arms so quickly that it’s like she was there the whole time. Bev’s hugs are always strong and consuming, and this is no exception. He’s lost in a world of flowery-perfume and red hair. She hugs so tight her nails sort of dig into Richie’s back but he doesn’t mind. It’s grounding. “I love you,” She whispers into his hair, pulling away to keep him at arm's length like Bill had. “I mean it, asshole, nothing will _ ever _change that.” 

“Thanks, Bev.” Richie says softly, and she pats his cheek before Mike sort of barrels into him. Richie laughs as Mike picks him up while he hugs him, hugging back even stronger. 

“You’re the bravest motherfucker I have ever met,” Mike says once he sets him down, forcing eye contact even though Richie wants nothing more than to avert his eyes to the floor. He isn’t good at compliments. 

“Not so much of a motherfucker anymore, am I?” Richie asks, and then cringes inwardly at himself. Bad joke. Beep Beep.

Mike takes a second to get it, but then he laughs, loud and clear and bright, like sunrise. “That’s so stupid,” He says, but he’s still laughing. 

Ben is a softer, less overwhelming sort of comfort. He’s waiting on Mike’s side when Mike finally pulls away, and he sets a hand on Richie’s shoulder. “I’m really proud of you.” Ben says, and his eyes are warm and sort of teary, nostalgic, even. Richie pulls him into a hug. 

“Thanks for keeping my secret.” Richie murmurs. 

Ben chuckles. “Thanks for keeping mine.” 

Richie pulls away, raising his eyebrows a bit. “No worries, but get on that, yeah? There’s no way I should be coming out before you ask a girl on a date.” 

Ben shoves at his shoulder, “Beep Beep.” His cheeks are red and he’s glancing at Bev. Richie’s chest puffs up. They should’ve made a bet - on who would do what first. Richie sort of wishes they had, but Haystack sort of owes him anyway. Richie has three years of wiggling eyebrows and sly smiles to pay him back with.

When Richie turns around, Eddie is standing across from him. His arms are crossed but he’s smiling. In that slow, soft way that he does. Richie puts his glasses back on to see Eddie better. His eyes look a little glassy. Richie doesn’t move to cut the length of space between them. It feels like he shouldn’t. Eddie seems to understand this, and he does it for him, walking slowly toward Richie. 

Eddie doesn’t pull him in for a hug. “So, queer, huh?” 

“Queer.” Richie confirms carefully. He was expecting - he doesn’t know. More, maybe. But that’s just Eddie. Made up of things Richie doesn’t expect and doesn’t understand. 

Eddie watches him for a moment longer, his eyes shifting all over Richie’s face. The only sort of hint that he isn’t about to tell Richie he never wants to be near him again is the smile on his face. “I’m proud of you. Sorry if that’s redundant, I don’t - I don’t know what to say.” 

Richie flinches. “No, it’s - thanks. Anything that isn’t, I don’t know, calling me a creep and saying you don’t want to be friends with me anymore is more than I should expect, anyway.”

Eddie’s brows furrow, and he reaches one arm out to settle on Richie shoulder. The touch is more comforting than it should be. “Richie, I wouldn’t - I don’t _ care. _You’re still you.” 

The words are more comforting than they should be, too, and Richie sighs when they wash over him. “I’m glad, ‘cause you’re pretty awesome. Don’t tell anyone I said that, though.” 

Eddie laughs softly, “Anyone I’d tell is in this room anyway.” And then he puts his other hand on Richie’s shoulder, his thumbs moving in slow circles. Richie tries his best not to make the way he breathes in sharply too obvious. Eddie stares at him, reaches a hand up and cups Richie’s face, makes eye contact, averts eye contact, sighs, and removes himself all together. 

Richie feels like he’s missing something. Because Eddie is touching him and he’s smiling at him but there’s - there’s something wrong. It’s like he forgot to bridge a gap somewhere in the last three hours and now he’s plummeting, free falling but there’s nowhere to land and he can’t tell if he’s falling at all or if he’s floating. He’s still half-drunk, but the adrenaline has taken over his senses and so has Eddie and now he feels wired and disoriented. 

“I need a fucking cigarette,” Richie says, to everyone, to no one, and he plucks the pack Bev gave him off the table and steps outside. 

He shakes his limbs out once he’s in the cool black of the night, trying to get the inside of his body to stop fluttering. Richie looks at his hands and realizes that they’re shaking, and laughs helplessly to himself. He sits down on the porch, pulling a cigarette out and lighting it. He takes a deep drag, feels the burn in his throat and the tingling in his fingertips, and sighs. 

His nose is stuffy and his eyes are sort of squinty, and he takes his glasses off to rub at them. Richie tries to replay the last twenty minutes in his head and it doesn’t work. His brain keeps jumping, from Bill’s soft grin and Eddie’s hand on his cheek. It hasn’t really set in yet, that he’s done it. He’s come out, another page turned in his book of growing up. Richie feels tired and also wide awake. His mind is heavy, almost. His brain won’t work right and it’s jumbling thoughts together that don’t make any sense but he also wants to run a mile or jump into the water at the Quarry, feel it wash him clean. 

Mike had called him brave, and Richie sort of wants to run back in and list off all the reasons he isn’t. Wants to tell him he’s scared shitless. Wants to tell him if he was it wouldn’t have taken this long. Wants to beg him, all of them, actually, to never leave. He doesn’t know how to be brave without them. He never has. Richie’s sort of worried he’ll leave Derry and revert back to - to what? He doesn’t know. Someone he doesn’t recognize, maybe. Although he can’t say he recognizes himself right now, either. He tries desperately to think of a version of himself he does and he can’t. Richie hasn’t ever really known himself.

He knows what he’s made up of. Jokes and quick movements and big ideas he doesn’t know how to vocalize. Being queer, too. He’s made up of straight A’s and bike rides and bruises and songs. But it all equates to - to something he can’t fathom. Richie has finally found a problem he can’t understand, and it’s himself. 

Richie takes another puff of his cigarette. He looks up, slipping his glasses back on and staring at the sky. There is no moon but there are stars, and when Richie was younger he used to think each of them were planets. He’d make up stories when he couldn’t sleep, finding one star that stood out and building a world around it. Richie had been irrationally upset the day he learned stars were just big flaming balls of gas, but now he finds consolement in that thought. They’re just lights, specks in the sky, and they shine everywhere no matter what. The sky in Derry is the sky in New York, no matter how far underwater Derry feels. The world is big and it’s also small, and everything here matters and it also doesn’t, and even though being queer feels like the end of the world it isn’t. Because Richie came out, and the world kept turning and the stars didn’t spontaneously combust, and Derry wasn’t changed by it. 

The back door creaks open and Richie doesn’t turn his head. He takes another drag. Someone sits down next to him, and when Richie turns to look at them he realizes it’s Eddie. He puts his cigarette out. Eddie doesn’t look at him, his eyes are trained upwards and then on his hands. Richie sort of wants to stand in front of him, scream or jump, maybe, find a way to prove to himself that he exists. He doesn’t. There’s something in the air, it’s charged but Richie can’t tell by what. It isn’t positive and it isn’t negative it’s just - stagnant. Like the whole world is holding its breath. That’s probably just Richie. 

“I’m sorry,” Is what Eddie says, and Richie prepares himself for the worst. _ I’m sorry, I have to go. I’m sorry, I can’t study with you anymore. I’m sorry, I can’t be in the same room with you. _Richie wouldn’t blame him. Richie would drive him home. 

“For what?” Richie asks. 

“For - for earlier. I wasn’t.” Eddie sighs, frustrated. “I didn’t say what I should have said. I wasn’t supportive, like I should have been. You said this - this _ thing. _That was probably so hard to say and scared the shit out of you and I. I walked up to you and asked if you were queer? Like, that was my big gesture as your friend?” 

“Eds, it’s okay-”

“No, it isn’t.” Eddie cuts him off, but his tone is soft, apologetic, and he finally meets Richie’s eyes. “I was being weird. And that’s not cool because it has _ nothing _ to do with you. Okay? I mean that. _ Nothing. _I don’t want you to think, not for a second, that I’m uncomfortable or that I think of you any differently, or that I don’t-” Eddie stops short, and he inhales quick. “I’m sorry.” 

“Eddie, it’s fine,” Richie says, and he means it. “I’m not mad or, like, offended. You reacted how you did. It’s - I was expecting a hell of a lot worse. From everybody. I’m not mad that you didn’t throw me my own personal pride parade.” 

Eddie snorts. He leans into Richie, so they’re shoulder to shoulder, and Richie wishes Eddie would lean is head on him and also that Eddie would never touch him again, maybe, because it sets his nerve endings on fire. “I am proud of you. And I think that you’re really fucking brave.” 

Richie shakes his head. “I’m not.” 

“You _ are. _ You just came out to a room full of people, that’s - it’s crazy brave.” 

Richie doesn’t say anything. They sit in silence for a moment, leaning against one another and Richie can feel every fiber of Eddie’s polo against his jacket. The music inside has started up again, but Richie can’t hear what’s playing. That frustrates him, a bit. He’d like to be able to keep this memory. Eventually Eddie stands up, and he reaches down to pull Richie with him. Once he’s standing, Eddie does hug him. It isn’t quick and it sure as hell isn’t painless. Eddie holds him tight, slides his hands around Richie’s shoulders, and Richie bites his tongue. 

“Thanks,” Richie says softly, and Eddie’s arms tighten.

“Don’t mention it.” Eddie whispers, and Richie feels it everywhere. He shivers. 

They go back inside, and the rest of them are dancing around each other. Bev laughs bright and loud when they come in, pointing at Richie and reeling him in on an invisible fishing rod. Richie laughs and humors her. Eddie gets more drinks, passing them out to each of them, and they spin around each other. Richie can hear the song playing now, but he doesn’t know what it is. Guitar heavy and reverberating, a song about youth and a sleepy town and a group of friends. He’ll have to ask Mike what it is - so he can listen to it on repeat when they seperate for the final time and keep the memory alive in his head. 

The song ends and another starts and when they tire of dancing they flop down on the floor. They take shots and turn the television on, and the music keeps playing. A sensory overload. The T.V is blue and pink and the room is orange and yellow and the music is purple and green, a night made up of technicolor. 

There is a piece of Richie laying on the floor of the outhouse now, just like there’s one in the library and in the clubhouse and in the arcade. It will stay there, perpetually, even when he’s gone. It’s been replaced but Richie doesn’t know with what. Maybe it’s polaroid pictures or dedications on the inside of books or a handful of postcards with a note scribbled on the back. _ Send me one for every place you go. _Maybe it isn’t any of those. Maybe it’s a mash up of each of them together. Bravery or insistence or both. 

Tomorrow he will drive home after dropping them off, and then he’ll start to do his best to pull away from Eddie. He’ll stop touching him and he’ll stop sending invitations out to spend more time with him and when Eddie asks him to get out of the hammock he’ll just get out of the fucking hammock, and he’ll be brave. Brave enough to save himself and brave enough to be brave on his own. 

That’s tomorrow, though, and this is tonight. So he shares secret smiles with Eddie hidden behind his cup and he presses their shoulders together again and he ruffles his hair and revels in Eddie’s blush. It’s self-sacrifice and it also isn’t, and Richie doesn’t know the difference between anything anymore. Not a fucking thing. 

\--------------------------

_ Spring, 1993 _

Two weeks go by in a flash, and Richie isn’t doing anything he said he was going to do. There has been no separation between himself and Eddie, and he hates himself for how much he relishes in it. The worst part is that Richie can’t even say he’s tried - because he hasn’t. He’d pulled Eddie in when he dropped him off the morning after Richie’s party and he’d scooched his chair closer every time they’d studied and he’d invited Eddie to his house to read comics and watch movies with him when they had left the Barrens yesterday. 

Richie is doing a lot of things he knows he shouldn’t, and they probably aren’t as meaningful and terrifying to anyone else as they are to him, but he knows they’ll hurt him in the long run. He knows he shouldn’t and he knows he isn’t helping himself but he does it anyway. But it isn’t bravery, not like his wishes on a general store candle and not like coming out. It’s the opposite, it’s weak and it’s selfish and entirely his fault, too. 

It doesn’t matter, not right now and maybe not in the future, either. Because Eddie is clean and warm, tucked in the front seat of Richie’s car as he drives them back to his house, and he bobs his head to the music and sings, sometimes, under his breath. And Richie is happy, mostly. He feels good - filled with the starry eyed wonder that he always feels in spring. It’s dampened by worry, for right now and for this summer, but that’s probably just Derry. He’s lived with that feeling before and he’ll do it again. 

Anyway, the good feeling is stronger. Richie’s friends have something to do with it, all of them in their own ways. His being queer was as big a deal as it wasn’t one, and that had been all Richie had wanted. Don’t brush over it and don’t focus on it. They were kind with him all night, gentle even, and at any other time it would have driven Richie crazy but in that moment it’s what he’d needed. He was vulnerable and a little skittish, and they cared for him without overwhelming him. Not in an obvious way - just simple things, petting at his hair and hugging him out of the blue. But when the next day had come, and it was like nothing had changed. They woke up, all dreadfully hungover, and shared leftover cupcakes and too hot coffee. The only sign that Richie had even said anything at all present in their actions. It was the soft smile on Ben’s face and the misty-eyed way Bev looked at him when they parted ways, but they didn’t mention it. That was better anyway, Richie didn’t really want to talk about it. 

Eddie was back to - well, saying normal feels weird but it’s the truth. There had been a spell of weirdness all of which Eddie felt too bad for, but it had passed on the porch. Like Richie had said, he didn’t blame him for it. Mostly, he had prepared for Eddie to pull away _ for _ him, because Richie was rarely the one to initiate the way they touched anyway. It was Eddie - grasping his wrist and tangling their legs in the hammock. Eddie hadn’t though, and it’s not like he does it more often but he also doesn’t do it any less, and Richie _ hadn’t _ been prepared for that, not at all. He’s getting a better handle on it though, or at least he’d like to think so. Richie doesn’t allow himself to read into it, and that helps. It stops his cheeks from blushing and his tongue from tripping over his words. It’s a win in that sense and a loss that it doesn’t change the way it makes him feel. 

Which is why Richie knows he shouldn’t be surprised at how his chest sort of tightens at the sight of Eddie in his room, but he is. Eddie fills up every space he walks into, and Richie’s house and bedroom are no different. Eddie is nitpicky but not in a bad way, more curious than anything, touching Richie’s shelves and the posters on his walls and the pile of crap on his desk. Richie stands with his hands in his pockets, rocking on his heels. Eddie doesn’t seem to notice, he makes his way around the room and hums to himself quietly, flicking through the little box of tapes on Richie’s single nightstand. 

Richie thinks his room is a pretty good descriptor of who he is. There isn’t one cohesive look to it. The walls are white but with all the posters that cover them he’s not sure you’d be able to tell, and the posters vary too. There are ones for music and movies and some that don’t make any sense to him at all - weird abstract art in all colors. The furniture doesn’t match, the headboard on his bed is brown and his nightstand is white and the shelf on the wall next to the closet which is made for books but is overwhelmed by miscellaneous items is a light blue-grey. He clutters too. Knick-knacks from garage sales and the thrift shop take up a lot of surface space. None of them have any meaning to him, not in a big way. Some are weird, the little porcelain turtle that’s missing a fin and the small mosaic vase that he hides his cigarettes in. He only has them because he likes the way they look. Others aren’t as odd, like the black and gold music box or the small air plant he’d snatched from the pharmacy. It’s set in an orange plastic skull - a face decorated in blue, green and white dots. Bev had convinced him to take it because he didn’t have to care for it. 

All in all, it’s a lot like him. Disorganised and mismatched and a little hard to look at. Eddie loves it. He picks up everything that catches his eye, asking Richie why he has it or where he got it or what it even is at all. Richie sort of wishes the explanations were deeper than they are - something poetic or meaningful - but they’re not. Eddie doesn’t care though, he snorts and sets them back down and finds something else. Richie watches awkwardly, silently. He can’t think of anything to say. Eddie looks like he belongs in Richie’s room, he takes up all the space in Richie’s house and in turn the space in Richie’s head, and Richie can’t figure out what to do with his hands. 

Eddie stops his frantic form of nesting eventually, sitting himself down on the bed. “Your room is cool, it’s unique.” 

“Yeah?” Richie asks, “I figured you’d be a little grossed out by it.” 

Eddie shrugs, “Eh, it’s cluttered, but not it’s not messy. I was expecting like - dirty laundry and old food under the bed. I would’ve been more confused if it was empty, honestly.” 

Richie hums and moves to sit on the bed too, ignoring how he wants to sit next to Eddie on the edge and instead flopping nearly on his pillow, legs crossed in front of him. “I don’t strike you as a minimalist type?” 

“Please,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes, “You wear clashing colors and stripes and polka-dots. Not even like the saying - you literally came to school in striped pants and a sweater with polka-dots yesterday.”

“Clashing colors,” Richie echoes, “It’s fashion, Eds, did New York teach you nothing?” 

“New York taught me what clashing colors were, dickhead,” Eddie smirks, “The pants were yellow and black and the sweater was green and red.” 

“So? I looked good.”

“You looked like a _traffic_ _light_.” 

“A good looking one!” 

Eddie stares at him for a second, mouth open, and then he laughs. It’s loud and sharp and contagious, and Richie can’t help but laugh too. It spills into his chest like honey and he has to take his glasses off to cover his face. He can feel it - in his smile and behind his eyes. The adoration, something like euphoria, and he does his best to cover it. Tries to melt all of that look off his face by the time he removes his hands. Richie doesn’t know if it works, but he hopes it does. 

When they’re back to sitting in silence, Richie gets the metal crate filled with comics from under his bed and sets it in the middle of them. It’s medium sized, lightweight when it’s empty and definitely not when it’s full. Silver holes like a chain link fence and a rainbow of pages. Eddie’s eyes widen, and he makes grabby hands for it that are a lot younger than seventeen. Richie doesn’t care, it makes him laugh again. 

He’s never been a huge fan of comic books, not really. His dad loves them, so Richie gets all of them when he’s done, and they’re great when he’s bored but most of the time they just stay under his bed. Richie doesn’t get bored very often. Still, he copies Eddie and picks one out, and eventually Eddie sprawls himself face down on Richie’s right side so his elbows are near Richie's ankles. They stay like that for awhile, Eddie reads and Richie tries to read, and he doesn’t do a very good job at it. 

Eddie is close, close enough that Richie can feel the heat from his skin in the space between where Richie’s pants ride up from his socks and he does his best to ignore it. Eddie’s smiling sweet and easy at the pages, and from the angle he’s at Eddie’s eyelashes are long and fluttered, and Richie tries to ignore that too. If Richie is made up of clutter and clashing colors Eddie is made up of distraction in itself. Richie figures they’re kind of opposites in some ways. Richie is distracting outwardly - neon and patterns and quick sentences - but he isn’t distracting on the inside. He’s an honest person, he says what he thinks and he goes where he wants to, and up until two weeks ago he only had two secrets that he didn’t vocalize. There’s only one now. 

Eddie is distracting on the inside. He’s simple when you look at him, two-toned outfits and an easy way of speaking, and he’s quiet when he has nothing to say. It’s the other things that are perplexing. What happens in the quiet. Eddie’s eyes show more of himself than he does, glazed or angry or warm or kind. He’s got expressions that don’t match what he says and they only get more confusing when he doesn’t say anything at all. Eddie is biting sentences while he holds your hand, and Richie can’t figure him out. 

Maybe it’s like that with everyone, maybe no one really knows what to make of another person. Maybe Eddie finds Richie just as overflowing and perplexing as him. Or it could just be Richie, and Eddie doesn’t care to peel back the layers of Richie as much as he does with Eddie. Richie doesn’t know. It’s all pros and cons and what-ifs that waste his time, but he can’t find any other way to spend it and maybe that’s the whole problem. That he either can’t find something better to do than work at understanding Eddie Kaspbrak or that he doesn’t want to. Either way, he still has to make a fucking decision. 

It’s March 21st, which means there are 81 days till the school year ends. 81 days until Richie leaves Derry and all of them - Eddie included - and Richie can’t keep weighing his options for that long. Either he takes what he can get the next four months, holds on to Eddie’s eyebrows and his cheeks and his hands and try to make sense of what they all mean before Richie goes. Or, he can either lose Eddie before that date comes or lose the part of himself that wants to desperately to dissect the things he doesn’t understand about him, but he doesn’t know if he has enough time to do that. 81 days feels like nothing. It doesn’t feel like enough time to stop caring. Which means that more likely than not, say he goes this second route, he’ll leave Eddie before he _ literally _leaves Eddie and hope that four months is long enough to stop it from hurting. 

Richie knows which option sounds like it’ll hurt less now. Richie knows which option sounds like it’ll hurt less later. He doesn’t know which version of himself to spare, or if any of it will make a difference anyway. Because for all he knows time is parallel - and one Richie saves himself now and one Richie saves himself later but both of them are still aching, and they both point fingers at the Richie who made the decision in the first place, and he can’t tell them that there was no point in making the fucking decision at all because he doesn’t know. He’s still here debating on which to make. Time is cyclical and time is parallel and time is linear, and there isn’t a single equation in calculus that can save him now. Eat your heart out, Mr. Watson. 

\--------------------------

They get bored eventually, or rather Richie gets bored and starts bouncing his leg and blowing air through his lips so much that even Eddie can’t ignore it and they move on to something else. Richie doesn’t have a television in his room Eddie doesn’t seem like he wants to go downstairs to watch a movie, so they stay where they are. 

They talk for a bit first, for lack of anything else to do, and once again it’s a conversation that can be used to represent something bigger. It’s offhand jokes and comments that lead into conversations about less trivial things, and eventually those are cut off by another joke and the cycle starts again. Meaning sandwiched between bullshit, and that’s not new to Richie. He lives his life by that. At least Richie’s getting better at talking about what matters, or at least he’s more aware of when he does it. 

Discussions span all but two topics - Richie’s idea of what comes at the beginning of summer and Richie’s coming out. He doesn’t know who sets the boundary but they respect it anyway, and he’s grateful for it. Richie doesn’t want to talk about what they talked about at the clubhouse that day they were alone. He’d spilled his guts there, confessing something that meant more to him than the whole queer thing did. Maybe that’s because being queer was apart of him - it wasn’t an ideation, it was a fact. He’d been holding it more protectively to his chest, his whole grandiose pipe-dream for the seven of them, than he had his sexuality. There was more room for pain when you speak truthfully about what you really want. Either way, Richie thought Eddie didn’t want it then and he knows Eddie doesn’t now, so he’d rather not reflect. Eddie had handed him his offer back no worse off than he had taken it, signed onto the back of a postcard from Maine, and Richie took it because he had no other choice. It’s fine, Eddie could have been crueler about it. Eddie could have been crueler about a lot of things.

So, instead of opening that can of worms - which was held closed by Richie or Eddie or both of them - they talked about things that felt less important. Less important might not be the way to describe them, because they each speak passionately regardless of the topic, but said topics sure as hell don’t mean as much to Richie as the other things do.

A lot of it is school, subjects that interest them and ones that don’t. Eddie says he’s interested in psychology, wants to learn more about his mother and why she behaves as she does. Munchausen by proxy, is what Eddie calls it. His mother’s obsession for control - her need to protect him expressing itself in fake pills and forged doctors notes. Eddie says that the diagnosis is slightly wong: because his mom didn’t make him sick, didn’t slip Ipecac into his tea or switch his multivitamins out with caffeine pills. It was less obvious than that and maybe more worrisome - for both of them - the need to enforce a mirage of sickness onto Eddie and Eddie’s belief in his mother. It’s the most fascinating part, the most troubling part, for Eddie. That no matter how far removed he felt from his mother it didn’t change the fact that he’d believed in it almost as much as she did. That’s what Eddie wants to understand - what switch flipped in her brain to cause it all, and how fragile the unwavering trust is between a child and their parent.

Richie doesn’t have any idea what he’s interested in. It’s something that’s infuriated him for a long time, the lack of big picture thinking he has in terms of a career. It’s infuriated a lot of other people too, probably. His college counselors and his parents and Stan, even, in the midst of a somewhat heated discussion a few years back. They had been talking about growing up and what they’d do if they could do _ anything _ they wanted once they left Derry. Stan wants to be an accountant - he likes numbers, and he likes the challenge of them too. Richie didn’t know what he wanted to do, Stan said with his brain Richie could do whatever he wanted, Richie said he didn’t care much for math or science despite how easy they came to him, Stan said that was _ stupid _because Richie could realistically get an easy job that payed a lot of money, and Richie had made a tearful, dramatic exit, and biked home. Whatever, he’d been thirteen and sensitive, and he’d looked up to Stan back then. His clean manner and his focused mind - they never made Richie jealous but they did inspire him, and Richie felt like he’d disappointed his favorite teacher. The next day, Stan apologized and Richie forgave him, and they didn’t talk about it after that. 

The thing was: Richie didn’t want easy. He didn’t want to settle for a boring career in chemistry or mathematics or fucking world history, no matter how simple it would have been or how much money it could have made him. He’d once told his mother that if he had one fear, it would be to lead a predictable life. A cookie-cutter family in a boring suburb in a quiet little town, office jobs and drives to school. It sounded peaceful and mundane and fucking terrifying, and Richie wanted nothing to do with it. His mother had been a little offended - and he did feel bad about it, but it was true. It’s still true now - growing up in Derry only enforced it. It’s not his only fear now, though. 

Either way it still leaves him exactly where he’d been at thirteen. No clue what it meant to want something bigger and still terrified of normalcy. Eddie says it’s okay not to know, and it’s nice to hear even if Richie doesn’t believe it. 

“What about like, film?” Eddie asks, leaning back on Richie’s bed with his arms crossed behind his head. “Maybe directing or cinematography, I don’t know, something creative.” 

Richie shrugs, “I don’t know about directing - I’m not a good leader, I don’t know how to tell people what to do.” 

“I don’t think _ that’s _true. You’re bossy.” 

“Oh _ okay, _ asshole, out of the two of us I seriously don’t think that I’m the bossy one.” 

“Whatever, I’m just saying,” Eddie laughs, “Okay, so no directing. What about cinematography?” 

Richie raises his eyebrows, “What, like camera shit?”

“Camera shit,” Eddie echoes, rolling his eyes, “No. Well, kind of, it’s like - you know when you really like how a movie looks? Like the colors and scene angles and stuff? That’s cinematography.” 

“Ah, I see. Okay, yeah, maybe. It might be cool to do the music for movies instead,” Richie says, “Ben’s better at all that other shit, but I could see myself picking out songs for certain scenes and stuff.” 

Eddie smiles at him, excited and bright, “See, I told you. You don’t have to figure it out right now, that’s what college is for. Taking random classes till one feels right, that sort of thing.” 

Richie grimaces, “Yeah, it’s the classes I’m not too excited for.” 

“I’m just saying! If you really like something, it won’t feel like a class.”

“Okay, yee old Eds. When did you get so wise?”

“Shut up Richie,” 

They’re silent for a bit, and Richie thinks some things over. The idea of film doesn’t sound bad - so to speak, and Eddie’s right about the creativity part. He’d sort of forgotten about the other aspects of life after high school when it came to college, the last four years taken up by core classes. Although more don’t sound very intriguing, he hadn’t considered the possibility outside of said core classes - college didn’t have to be more english and more fucking chemistry. Finding music for movies sounds pretty cool, Richie was good with music - always had been. He knows it’s pretentious to assume you have good taste, that doesn’t stop him from doing it though. For Richie, music was a lot more about how it made you feel than it was about how it sounded.

“Radio might be cool,” Richie says, nearly without thinking.

Eddie looks up at him, eyebrows sort of furrowed. “What?”

“Like, doing radio. Is that how you say it? _ Doing radio. _Sounds weird. Anyway, like running a station or something, picking out songs to play and shit.” 

“Huh,” Eddie says, either to Richie’s lack of vernacular or his idea. Maybe both. “Yeah, that actually sounds really fitting. With your impressions and shitty jokes and all that, I think people would like it.” 

“My jokes aren’t shitty,” Richie counters immediately. 

Eddie rolls his eyes, “Not my point. Whatever, you’re interesting. Not so unauthentic like other people, y’know? It’d be unique, like half music and half just you running your mouth, you’re good at that.” 

“I’m gonna ignore that last part and focus on you calling me unique,” Richie smirks, “Thanks Eddie, I think you’re _ unique _too.” There’s a french twang on the last word, it isn’t very good. Maybe Richie won’t bother naming that voice. 

Eddie flips him off, “Fuck off. Is your taste in music even good?”

“_Me? _Hell yeah it is, what the fuck?” Richie asks, “Did you not hear the tape in the car the other day? Of course my music taste is good.”

“Bev made the tape.” Eddie challenges.

“And you liked it!”

“That doesn’t mean your taste in music isn’t shit, Rich.” 

“Fuck you, don’t insult my taste. I bet it’s better than yours, anyway. I don’t listen to fucking Cyndi Lauper.” Richie says.

“And what’s wrong with Cyndi?” Eddie asks, biting but still sweet, somehow. Richie doesn’t know how he does that. “Fine. Prove it, put something on. If it’s shit I won’t hold back, you know, so be prepared.” 

So Richie proves it. He gets up and grabs his box of tapes - sorts through it for a minute. He’s got a bunch, he’d started making them a year or two ago and never really stopped. There are ones for moods - when he feels low or when he feels high, nostalgic and sleepy or enthusiastic and thrilled. Ones for years, too. His favorite songs from 1991 and 1992, along with tapes for specific eras. If movies were gospel for Ben and books were gospel for Bill, music was gospel for Richie. It’s imagery - songs have places that they’re meant for, even if he hasn’t ever been to them. California was deep throaty voices and sweet lyrics about love and dreams, reverberation by heavy guitars. Maine was sort of the opposite - soft and slow. Songs about getting out in every sense, whether it be from small towns or old ways or your own mind. Songs about love and friendship too, but they’re all gripped in past tense. Like Maine was synonymous for loss. In some ways, it sort of was. Loss of close bonds and memories and parts of yourself that you can’t get back.

Richie plucks out three of his recent tapes, all collections he’d made to keep in his car. They’re sort of everything jumbled together - no real way to categorize them. Songs that make him happy along with songs that make him sad, all of which he loves equally. Richie grabs his Walkman, along with the shitty set of headphones that came with it. He’s got a better pair now - the over the head kind and not the kind that go into each ear - but he wants to listen with Eddie as opposed to watching his reactions. 

He sits back down onto the bed, handing an earphone to Eddie with a pointed look. Eddie scoffs and rolls his eyes, but accepts it gratefully. Richie puts the other in his ear, pops a tape in; Car Mix #1, and presses play. It’s the Pixies, Planet of Sound, loud electric guitar right off the bat - and Eddie jumps. Richie snickers at him and receives a shove on the shoulder, but eventually Eddie’s bobbing his head, nodding approvingly. He mimics a heavy rock idol - tongue stuck out and nose scrunched with his hands up by his head. It shouldn’t be endearing but it is anyway, because everything about Eddie was contradictory. 

They sit on the bed and listen to music for awhile, and the songs are contradictory too. Loud and brash next to sweet and slow, but Eddie seems to like it. His moods fit the songs too - he bops his head and grins at the sheets when the music picks up and closes his eyes and sways when it slows. Richie can’t focus on the music and Eddie at the same time, it seems. When his eyes are trained on Eddie’s face it’s like the music isn’t playing at all so he ends up closing them or looking somewhere else. It doesn’t really work - just like that day at the Quarry. Richie’s eyes have minds of their own just as his heart does, and they both point back at Eddie even though he tells them not to. 

When the tape is over, Eddie slips the earphone out and Richie does the same. 

“So?” Richie asks, “What’s the verdict?” 

Eddie chews on his bottom lip, “Hm, not bad. Unfortunate lack of eighties pop, but it wasn’t shit.” 

“That’s your version of not holding back?” Richie teases.

“What, you want me to tell you it all sucked?” 

“Nah, it’d hurt my ego.” 

“I think I’d be doing you a favor, but okay.” Eddie looks at him for a moment, smiling soft with his hands in his lap. Richie doesn’t say anything, forces himself to swallow in a way that isn’t rough and forces a blush away from his cheeks. “Make me a tape.” Eddie says finally. 

“Do you even have anything to play it on?” Richie asks.

“There’s a boombox at my house, my mom doesn’t use it.” Eddie shrugs, “C’mon, I wanna see how it’s done by the future radio star himself.” 

So, Richie makes him a tape. Because he doesn’t know how to refuse Eddie, and he doesn’t know how to be honest with him either. Not about things like this, not to his face. Music is places and music is feelings and music is gospel, and Richie doesn’t know how to do things halfway. He doesn’t know how to put songs on a tape that feel like Eddie without showing how he _ feels _about Eddie - and his only hope is that Eddie is sort of dense. It’s not a fair thing to hope for, and like all things recently he does it anyway. Eddie leans over his shoulder while he makes it, but he doesn’t say anything about the songs Richie writes down on his notepad before getting to work. Fleetwood Mac and Third Eye Blind and fucking ABBA. It’s truth for Richie and nothing but music for Eddie, and that’s as pessimistic as it is relieving. 

The tape takes about an hour to make in all, and as Richie adds the last song he feels way too fucking obvious. It’s a conglomerate of songs, ten in total, and just like the ones for his car they have no set mood. They’re hopeful and soft and angry and vengeful, _ I know you’ve had your problems, your not the only one, when your sugar left, he left you on the run. _ It feels like admission, and Richie can’t do anything about it. 

When Richie drives Eddie home, Eddie asks Richie to play the tape in the car. Richie says no - says it has to be a surprise or a solo listening experience or some other bullshit instead of saying what he means. He doesn’t even know what he means. That the tape is too clairvoyant, maybe. That Richie is scared if Eddie listens to it with him, if he listens to it at _ all, _the only other secret he has ever kept will be splayed right in front of him before he even opens his mouth. Richie’s scared that’ll happen regardless if he’s there anyway - but if it’s the latter at least Eddie won’t have to watch Richie avoid his eyes and bite at the inside of his cheeks and cry, maybe. He probably wouldn’t, but who knows? Cyclical Time Richie, maybe, Richie thinks a little crazily. The one who's done this already and will do it again, like Jack Torrence. Maybe he’s Cyclical Time Richie already, because he sure as hell is going in circles. 

Richie drops Eddie off, hugs him goodbye because he doesn’t know what to do, and drives home. There’s a tape in Eddie’s back pocket and there’s a piece of Richie with it, and just like the one in the outhouse and just like the one in the fucking library, it will stay there. There are 81 days until the end of high school and the start of his brand new life, and every second that passes it looks less shiny and new and more like he’ll go to bed June ninth and wake up June tenth and nothing will change. He’ll wake up in Derry and he’ll stay in Derry and he’ll die in Derry, literally and metaphorically. Because Derry eats at people, it robs them of light and hope until they aren’t made up of much of anything. Richie wants more than anything for it not to be true, for him to lead a life he doesn’t hate - far away and anything but monotonous - but doesn’t everyone? Weren’t the people who lived in Derry now made up of those same sorts of aspirations before they were taken? 

Richie doesn’t know. Maybe he’s different. He _ hopes _he’s different, and that’s all he’s got anyway. A lot of hope and a lot of heart and a lot of fucking ambition. He also has a decision to make, unless the tape makes it for him, which it very well may. That may be wishful thinking or it may be fearful thinking, and he doesn’t know which one of those it is either.

\--------------------------

_ Spring, 1993 _

A week passes by, in that strange way where it feels really long but also like it couldn’t have been a week once it’s over, and nothing changes. Richie had expected it to - he’d sat anxiously on the steps in front of Derry High an hour before he usually showed up, and waited for Eddie. Waited for Eddie’s mother to pull up and for Eddie to get out of the car, glance at Richie or maybe even glare at him, and walk right past to his first class. Waited for Eddie to decide for him, and leave Richie and his friends without any acknowledgment. Richie wouldn’t have blamed him and he wouldn’t of asked for an explanation either. Richie was queer and Richie allowed Eddie to pull him in without telling him he was and Richie made him a tape with songs about love and loss and friendship. Eddie didn’t owe him anything. 

That didn’t happen, though. Eddie had gotten out of his car, and he had stopped to look at Richie, but he wasn’t glaring. He’d looked a little puzzled, head tilting to the side a little bit, and walked over to Richie. He’d sat down, nudged Richie with his shoulder and pulled the tape out of the front pocket of his bag. 

“You have your Walkman?” Eddie had asked. 

“Yeah? Why?” Richie asked back to him. 

“I wanted to listen to it.” Eddie said, and then after a moment, “With you.” 

“Oh, huh, okay.” Richie replied, fumbling for the Walkman in his backpack. “Did you - did you like it?”

Eddie had looked up at him, “I did. Thanks, by the way.” He’d seemed - awkward, uncomfortable, maybe. Or nervous. Richie still can’t read him. 

“No stress,” Richie said easily, even though stress had definitely accompanied it. Whatever - what Eddie didn’t know wouldn’t kill him. 

Richie had popped the tape in, slipped a headphone in his ear and handed one to Eddie, silently relieved he’d forgotten his nicer pair of earphones today, and pressed play. They sat on the steps together and listened as the rest of their friends got to school, but neither of them stopped listening until the bell had rung. 

While Richie walked to class, he could still hear the last song that played before they’d separated ringing in his ears. Songbird, Fleetwood Mac, _ Cause I feel that when I’m with you, it’s alright, I know it’s right. _Songs about love and songs about loss and songs about friendship, and it’s just fucking music, at the core. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

And that had been that, in the sense that once again Richie had worried himself sick over nothing. Reading too far into could-have-beens like he always had, reading too far into Eddie and his words that said the opposite of his actions like he always had, and he feels - exhausted, mainly. Tired down into his bones of all of it, the worrying and the confusion.

So Richie makes a fucking decision. It’s about time he does, and it may be the wrong one and it may hurt him worse somewhere down the line, but he does it anyway. Richie gets home, paces around his room for fifteen minutes, tries to relax, gives up, and leaves again. Hopping inside his car and into Derry once again, drunk on adrenaline and fear and a feeling he can’t place - set into his teeth and underneath his fingernails. It might even be bravery. 

Richie’s decides that in order to do this right, neither of his previous options were going to work. He isn’t going to hold onto Eddie until he absolutely can’t and he isn’t going to remove him before he has to. Instead it’s a mix of both, which isn’t something he’d considered, even though he should have because a lot of things in his life were like that. Nothing was black and white, everything was smushed together - grey and dampened just like Derry and just like him. Pros and cons that have their own pros and cons, and for once he’s going to take his own advice. There wasn’t any point in worrying about what’s bad and what’s good because each of those also have their own bads and goods. Yin and yang, or the devil and angel on your shoulders or inside your head. There wasn’t any point in worrying about the future because he cannot control time, no matter how many functions of it he learns. 

Richie is going to keep Eddie for the remaining 74 days he has him, and he’ll talk to him and look at him and learn what he can. But he’s going to let the piece of him who wants that go, which sounds impossible, he knows it does, but it couldn’t be. Because Richie has lost himself all over this town unintentionally, at the clubhouse and at the Quarry and in Eddie’s back pocket. Sometimes it’s a trade and other times it isn’t - but that doesn’t stop it from happening. So Richie figures: if he can lose pieces on accident he sure as hell can lose pieces on purpose, he’s always been stubborn. Graced with determination, and he’s dead set on knowing Eddie while he can without wanting him in ways he can’t. 

It’s a trade this time, but it’s with himself. He doesn’t know if that’s happened yet but that’s still what it is. Richie will trade the part of himself that wants Eddie with the part of him that wants Eddie more, maybe. The part of him that’s strong enough to let the ache go no matter how good it feels in turn for getting to know Eddie at all, because it’s braver to do so. It’s braver not to wear a mask, and to take it off he either has to come clean and tell Eddie how he feels or he has to stop feeling it all together.

And maybe all in all that isn’t bravery. Maybe it would be more courageous for him to choose the first option, because he isn’t sure killing off a part of yourself for someone else is more admirable than just _ not _ doing it, but fuck it. There was bravery in coming out and there was bravery in admitting his crush to himself at all, and nothing is simple. No one action can be described by just one word. Things are happy while they’re sad and they’re scary while they’re exciting, so fuck it. Somewhere in the jumble of words that describe knowingly getting over somebody to benefit both of you is bravery, and that’s good enough for him.

Richie knows from past experiences that to lose yourself you have to put that part somewhere, and like all things he does there’s an idea that exists in his head for a millisecond before he acts on it. He thinks over the places he’s given himself up before, movie theaters and thrift shops and forests that aren’t really forests, and puts the car in drive. 

Richie goes to the Kissing Bridge, with a plan half-formed inside his head. While the bridge was synonymous for a lot of things bad - slurs and insults and scratched out confessions - it was synonymous for a lot of hopeful things, too. Names of people etched inside hearts, love and romance carved into the wood so it existed long after those relationships expired. It’s why it was _ called _the Kissing Bridge, after all, because before it had been covered in words filled with hate it had been a place for couples. Not many come down there anymore, though, but still. 

Richie never liked it, even before he knew he was queer. He didn’t like the way it made his skin itch and his bones fill with dread, embarrassment before he even knew he had anything to be embarrassed about. At first it was his lack of crushes, humiliation in the idea he’d never had the urge to take some random girl out there and carve her name into the planks of wood before pulling her in and kissing her soft. Anger, too, for feeling like that was something expected of him. And then, later, more humiliation. At the slurs pressed tight there, how they fit him and described him, categorized him when he hadn’t ever asked to be. As if being queer was a _ choice_, as if anyone would ever decide to be something so universally hated. 

He doesn’t like the bridge now, either. It feels the same driving across it now as it did walking across it every time before, uncomfortable and prickly on his shoulders and the tops of his hands. There is no longer the sense of power like last time, though, he doesn’t feel like he’s crushing every nasty carving under his tires as he pulls up. They gather around his feet instead, biting at his ankles, swallowing him. Richie parks his car parallel to an empty-ish plank of wood, so he can hide behind it. It’s sort of similar to how he’d circled the library the day he’d grabbed the book, more in feeling than in action, because he doesn’t drive over the bridge more than once before he parks, but he wants to. And he doesn’t get out of his car right away, glaring at the bridge and all of it’s carvings, bad and good at the same time. The feeling is the same - the nervous ugly pressure underneath his chest of doing something he isn’t supposed to. 

Richie stays in his car for a moment, eyes trained on the middle plank of the bridge wall, tapping his fingers against the leather of the steering wheel. He blows air through his lips and inhales heavily, hoping breathing will placate him. It doesn’t really work, and after three quick, too-heavy breaths he starts to feel a little light-headed. Richie shakes his head, curls whipping him in the face with the force of it, before he opens his car door. He leaves the car running, hoping that he won’t take too long and kill his battery or run out of gas or some other random car shit. Richie doesn’t really know how all of that stuff works. 

He slams the door behind him with more force than necessary, and it’s loud enough to make him flinch. Richie fumbles in his pocket, gathering his hands around the box-cutter he’d snatched from his dad’s toolbox in the garage. It’s alike to the way Eddie had grasped his inhaler that day after the clubhouse - fingers formed around the inside of his pocket instead of pulling it out. Richie gets it now, it’s grounding to feel it there, an odd sort of comfort. A reminder, maybe. A form of controlling something when it feels like you can’t control anything else. His calloused fingers grasp the handle of it, avoiding the sharp end, as he curves around his car. Richie glances around him before he squats down, because even if he hasn’t done _ this _ before he still grew up in Derry where checking your surroundings before doing anything was pretty second nature. Especially when you were someone like Richie, where existing was enough to piss people like Victor Criss and Belch Huggins off. Richie can’t even imagine what they’d do to him if they knew why he was here. Sure, carving a set of initials into the Kissing Bridge didn’t have to mean anything, it didn’t mean they would suddenly know he was queer, but still. That would only _ add _to the list of reasons they’d decided to torment him over the years, even if that’s the only one he finds valid. 

Richie settles on his knees before he pulls the box-cutter out of his pocket, thumbing at the sharp edge of it. It feels overwhelmingly juvenile now that he’s here, actually acting on the half-formed plan he’d spit up out of nowhere. Richie allows that feeling to pass, or at least for it to reside further away in his brain as opposed to the forefront. He’s stubborn, and he’s already here, so there wasn’t any point on backing out now. He brings the sharp end to the slab of wood and rests it there for a second, grasping the side with his other hand. The wood is splintered and cold on his fingers, and through the gaps in the bridge he can see the water of the creek rushing down below. Richie presses firmer on the box-cutter, carving a straight vertical line. 

His plan had been to cut his and Eddie’s initials into the bridge, R + E, as opposed to their full names because he wasn’t a fucking idiot. Richie wants to do it for a few reasons; he wants proof that they existed, that they’d met in Derry and that they’d escaped Derry too, something not many people were able to do. He wants proof of his feelings as well, so he can hold onto it and avoid reverting back to the scared thirteen-year-old who didn’t understand why he felt the way he did the second he crosses the Derry townline, because he sort of feels like he will. Like all the progress he’d made since that conversation at Ben’s house will be cut away to reveal whoever he’d been before. This is a way to validate that he can have crushes, that he has changed and grown, that he’s on the way to becoming someone he can admire. Lastly, he wants to move the fuck on, and this feels like the way to go about it. Maybe with that proof of existence and that proof of acknowledgement will be enough to let go of Eddie in a way that isn’t literal. He’s letting go of the wanting, and for the first time addressing the fact that he can’t have Eddie as anything more than a friend, because even though he’d always known he hasn't approached it honestly. It isn’t letting go of Eddie as much as it is letting go of his crush on Eddie, pouring it into two letters and three syllables on the part of Derry that always made him squirm. 

Richie isn’t stupid enough to think this is all it takes, but it feels like the next step. He knows he won’t carve the last horizontal line of an E and no longer like Eddie, because nothing is ever simple. He knows feelings are more complex than carvings on a bridge and understanding that hoping for something that cannot happen won’t get you anywhere, but it’s all he’s got. He’s got hope and a whole lot of determination and a knack for hollowing himself out, and it may not be enough but it is something, and Richie has always been good at taking what he can get. 

So he carves the vertical line again, deeper this time, before angling the box-cutter at the top to form a curve. Another line, diagonal from the curve and then a space. One vertical line, one horizontal line, a space. He feels every inch of it on the spikes of wood against his palm and underneath his skin. It feels like rebellion, too, carving the initials of two boys into a bridge that’s covered in anonymous words directed at someone just like him. A bridge built to hold him back in a town that wasn’t meant to contain him at all. Once again it feels like crushing the gravel floor under his tires but now it’s underneath his hands. There are names and initials all over this bridge, and for all he knows some of them represent two boys or two girls as opposed to one boy and one girl, but none of them belong to him. Which is a damn shame considering Richie has lost himself all over Derry and it’s never rewarded him with anything aside from six people that don’t belong here either. He’s lost himself but never on purpose, and doing so is pride and shame wrapped up into one. It doesn’t matter, Richie can deal with contradiction. 

One vertical line, three horizontal lines, and it’s done. It’s over too quick for how much it means to Richie, but that’s everything anyway. Coming out as queer was two words and carving his crushes name into the Kissing Bridge took ten minutes. Nothing that shatters your reality takes as long as it feels like it should, Richie knows that, because the end of your world is just another fucking day for someone else and vice versa. Richie’s world revolves around him but nobody else's does, and at the end of the day the carving doesn’t mean shit to anybody but him, and he’s okay with that. It was about time something in Derry belonged to him, even if it meant releasing the only thing he’d actually ever wanted to call his own. 

Richie admires his work for a few seconds. It isn’t good, not really, the R is a little jagged and the E is bigger than both the plus sign _ and _ the R, but at least it’s done. It’s perpetual now - both of them and Richie’s feelings. The carving will exist on the bridge long after Richie and Eddie leave, and Richie can only hope the crush stays with it. Richie and Eddie will exist on the bridge along with everything that goes unsaid, and just like coming out - nothing has changed because of it. Derry is no different because of the carving, and neither is anyone else. No one aside from Richie, maybe, although he doesn’t feel different either. He feels like the same Richie who decided to carve R + E back in his room, but that’s just being human. Change doesn’t happen overnight and it doesn’t happen because you made your claim on somewhere new literally instead of figuratively, but it does happen. It has to, if Richie’s _ metaphor for life _had any fucking truth to it, it has to. Because this sure as hell feels hard to deal with, and it sure as hell feels like enough to end the world, and as Richie thumbs over the letters he tries to imagine leaving all the blushes and lingering glances there with it. 

Richie stands up and curves back around to the front door of his car, grasping the metal handle and sliding into the seat once the door is opened, and tries to feel new. Tries to allow the ache of letting go be replaced by the strength it took to do it in the first place. Richie takes one last glance at the bridge as he shifts his car from park to drive - R + E amongst a lot of other Consonant + Consonants’ - and then he avoids looking at it all together. 

His tires drag along the unpaved gravel, and he crushes old feelings like broken glass underneath them as he drives. Hope, and want, and dread, turned into dust underneath jagged rubber, and he’d like to think he leaves those there too, but who knows? They make stick around, as all things do, tucked inside the craters of Richie’s wheels so he’ll take them wherever he goes. Maybe those feelings were never on the road at all. Underneath his fingernails and in the gaps of his teeth instead, a part of him he has no hope of cutting out. Richie can’t have everything he wants - he can’t let go of what makes him who he is - and maybe he doesn’t want to let go of hope and want and dread anyway. Those may be useful in the long run. 

Still, there’s a part of him on that bridge, and that’s what he’d come to do. It might not be the part of him he’d intended on losing but it’s a part of him nonetheless. It’ll stay there as will every other piece he’s given up, and it could be replaced now or later or not at all, but at least he’d fucking done it. 

Maybe he’d given up another bit of childhood or another bit of wonder, and maybe giving up a crush on Eddie meant giving both of those up with it. They weren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Making a mature decision meant letting go of the immature alternative, and it still didn’t mean it was simple. There’s no black and white, no right or wrong way to go about anything at all, and especially not with this. Richie is sure there’s a smarter way to change as there is a more foolish one, and he might be in the middle ground if the middle ground even existed, which it probably didn’t.

The carving exists, though, and so does Richie, which means his feelings exist as well. Some of Richie and some of said feelings exist within the carving and some of Richie and some of his feelings he can never be rid of, and he’ll carry them under his tires and between his teeth for the rest of his life. And others will stay in Derry - on Eddie’s front porch and on the steps of Derry high - while others spread across the country with the only other people Richie ever trusted to take him. That’s okay, they deserve it. The six of them - they deserve whatever pieces of Richie they take. They gave him glittering summers and mock-neck bravery and the strength to breathe underwater, so in Richie’s opinion they can have whatever the fuck they want. 

Richie will take the crumbs. He’ll take the arcades and the mix-tapes and the being queer and everything that comes with it, and if he’s lucky he’ll keep the best parts of them too. It’s a fair trade.

\--------------------------

_Spring, 1993_

If there had been a plan set in Richie’s head, it would seem the next week and a half would follow it with ease. Of course there hadn’t been, because Richie hadn’t gotten far enough past _ make the carving and move the fuck on_, but the point still stands. Things had been - different. Easier. Granted Richie had spent the weekend swallowed up inside his bedroom and faking a cold, but Monday came and everything had been fine. He’d allowed himself two days of solitaire, playing sad music and watching his favorite movies, and the loneliness had sucked but Richie would like to think it did its job. 

Unlike he’d hoped but just as he’d suspected, carving initials into the Kissing Bridge wasn’t as ritualistic as he’d made it out to be, but maybe that was a mirage for something that existed only in his head. The real process had been the acknowledgment that he had to get over Eddie, had to ignore all of the things inside of him that wanted to pull Eddie close, the bridge had just been something literal. Grounding. Not as up in the air as a simple thought but something more concrete. Either way - the crush doesn’t disappear but it does move from the forefront of Richie’s brain. And yeah, sometimes he has to force it down along with a few other things, the urge to touch Eddie’s curls or play with his hands, but it is getting easier. Richie doesn’t allow himself to look at Eddie as much, and that helps. He doesn’t allow Eddie to share the hammock with him, and that helps, even if Eddie’s eyebrows furrow and he looks a little hurt because of it. Which wasn’t really fair - though Richie doesn’t know to who. Maybe to both of them. It wasn’t fair for Richie to flip a 180 on the sort of relationship they had formed and it wasn’t fair for Eddie to look so crushed either, but he can’t save everybody. If Richie has to settle for saving both himself and Eddie only halfway as opposed to saving either one of them entirely he’ll do it. 

Monday passes into Tuesday which moves through Wednesday, and things could definitely be worse. The two of them only study in the library for two out of the three days, because school was only running a half week before they moved into spring break. The time cramped up behind a wooden table spread over loose papers is still tough - too close for comfort and distracting - but it’ll be over soon anyway. After spring break they have exams and the study sessions will be a thing of the past. Richie hates how grateful he is for that, because he knows time is limited, but it’s still relieving. It isn’t like it means they’ll spend any less time together, but at least they won’t have to be alone. Richie finds that it’s easier to ignore the quickening beat of his heart and the way his tongue swells up when he’s surrounded by the others. Eddie is still consuming then, but when Richie finds himself being submerged he can hang off of Stan or pester Ben instead of allowing himself sink under. 

Spring break comes and goes in a whirlwind of rain and sunshine, alternating between days. The seven of them don’t spend a lot of time apart, a silent agreement between all of them that they should spend their last spring break together. They don’t vocalize it, but Richie can feel it. It’s in the silent glances between all of them sometimes, nostalgia prevalent on their faces as if they're already looking back on it before the week has even passed. It’s in the lack of conversation about _ next time _ too, because that had always been a common conversation topic. In the years prior when they didn’t accomplish everything they’d wanted to, there was always a wistful assurance that they always had next year, and they don’t anymore. Richie finds that’s one of the only things that isn’t getting any easier - the thought of losing them - but he pushes on anyway. Whatever that saying was; Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, or some other profound bullshit like that. As most things in Richie’s life, there is truth in what used to feel melodramatic. 

Richie spends his seven days of freedom all over Derry, like some sort of farewell tour. They go to the Aladdin and spill themselves on the sticky tiling of the concession stand, and they eat brunch at the corner diner. They swim in the Quarry too, all of them this time, and the water is as cool and cleansing as it always is. It’s the same games as it always is too, chicken and breathing contests, because you’re never too old to be competitive. 

Richie feels suspended in Derry a lot of the time, like he’s stuck in-between something. Versions of himself, maybe, because walking downtown or banging his heels on the rock that overlooks the water he feels 11 and 13 and 18 all at once. The rest of his friends feel that way too, even Eddie, though Richie hadn’t known him at those ages. He sees them like a kaleidoscope of all their different versions, child-like mannerisms they’ve held onto and wise sentences that only come with growing up. 

There is no more feeling like he has to help them claim spaces because they already belong to them. The Barrens belongs to them just as the arcade does, and it feels a lot less like a false-sense of ownership that comes as a teenage rite of passage. It’s knowledge now, certainty. Derry belongs to the seven of them just as much as they don’t want it, and Richie hopes the town will feel their absence when they trickle out. He knows it isn’t likely, because they’ve done enough already that should have crumbled Derry town to it’s bones by just existing, but he wants it anyway. Maybe Derry is being held up by the seven of them, and once they each cross the line it’ll finally sink so far underwater it’ll be like it never existed at all. A plane of flat earth and green trees filled to the brim with something sick and rotted. It wouldn’t matter, no one would miss it. 

All in all things are good. They drive out to Bangor on Wednesday, split between Richie’s car and Bill’s car, or rather his mother's car. The seven of them had always wanted to take a roadtrip - something long and cross-country. This isn’t it but it’s as close as they’ll ever get, and Eddie hasn’t ever seen Bangor so they make it work. The trip takes about an hour and a half, but they stay all day, stopping at the Bangor Waterfront. It’s the closest thing to a beach in Maine even if they can’t go to the water, and they soak up the clean air on the fronts of their cars. Eddie sits next to him then, warm skin against warm skin, and even though Eddie has said small towns weren’t the place for boys like him Richie still feels like he fits. Eddie looks good against the blue and white background, his freckles more prominent in the sun. Richie thinks Eddie could probably make any place his own, thinks that Eddie was insane for thinking he could blend in anywhere. Eddie could stand in the middle of Times Square - cast in neon lights and bustled between traffic, and Richie would still be able to point him out. 

They eat a shitty lunch at an Italian restaurant on the two-block strip of downtown, all of them around a table. The restaurant is mock-fancy, laminated menus in cursive and plastic chandeliers, and that feels right too. There were a lot of places like that in Maine, made up and glamorized like they had anything in comparison to bigger places, but it works for the seven of them. Second-hand teens in second-hand rooms. The food is okay, but Richie isn’t really paying enough attention to it to care. They’re loud, the group of them, talking over one another and laughing harder than necessary, and when Bill spews watered-down mango Italian soda all over the table they’re eventually kicked out. Richie wouldn’t have it any other way. 

They watch the sunset over the water of the Penobscot River, the sky melting from blue to pink to orange, casting them all in glowing light. Eddie says the sunsets in Maine are nothing like the ones in New York, dampened by light pollution and smog, green-blue and dusty. Eddie thinks the sunsets in the country are beautiful, and although Richie has seen them before - has been watching the same sky his whole life - and he’s staring at the curve of Eddie’s nose and the way his eyelashes flutter, he agrees. They gather back into their cars once the sun has set and drive back into Derry again, crossing over Highway 15 and through side streets. Richie feels wrong when he passes the welcome sign, like the itchy feeling under his skin that he thought only existed on the Kissing Bridge actually resided in all of Derry, like it crawled inside him all the time, but he ignores it. 

It passes as they reach Ben’s house anyway, spilling inside his living room sunburned and sleepy. Ben puts a movie on and Mike helps Bev get pillows and blankets and sleeping bags, and Richie feels like he’s moving in circles once again. The good kind though, memories you wouldn’t mind reliving. Richie shifts between the movie and his friends, blue static light and Stanley’s nose tipped inside of a book, a group of kids in an art museum and Eddie’s clean-cut fingernails against his thigh. Richie’s eyes open and close slowly before he falls asleep, and it’s the easiest time he’s had going to bed in awhile. 

\--------------------------

_ Spring, 1993 _

55 days before the end of senior year is when Eddie tells him. Eddie seems to have a knack for following patterns, because Richie has a peculiar sense of deja vu the entire day. 

It happens in the evening on the last day of exams, which had been enough of a stressful event already. That was why Richie hadn’t been worried - so to speak - when Eddie was acting similarly to the way he had that first day at the clubhouse. They’d left Derry High, the six of them, and walked downtown. Richie left his car in the parking lot, because it was awkward to fit five of his friends in it and leave one biking, considering Mike would already be at the Aladdin, so he’d decided he would walk back alone to drive home when they were done. 

They’d been lighthearted and giddy, drunk on the sense of relief that comes after finishing a week of testing. Eddie had been silent and distant in a way Richie hadn’t seen before, not so much shifting eyes and obvious discomfort but hidden instead. He wasn’t saying much, replying when he was spoken too and laughing a little to late after a joke was told, smiling in way that looked forced and didn’t reach his eyes. Richie had pegged a few reasons, lack of sleep maybe, or lingering stress from their frantic sessions in the library the week prior. Selfishly, Richie thought that maybe Eddie was a little upset about said studying sessions coming to a close, but he didn’t focus on it. It was part of the deal he’d made with himself, to avoid reading too far into Eddie when he couldn’t understand him, avoid coming up with explanations in his head that made his chest ache familiarly. 

So instead, Richie ignored it. Sort of. At least he didn’t approach Eddie directly like he did before, but he was softer toward him. Circumvented making Eddie the butt of his jokes, stuck next to Eddie so he wouldn’t feel left out, that sort of thing. It got better throughout the evening, Eddie seemed brighter inside the theater when Mike snuck them in to see Dazed and Confused, and he laughed at Richie’s shitty stoner impressions. Still, Eddie didn’t feel like he was there, not all the way. Richie did his best to give Eddie space, but Eddie seemed to gravitate towards Richie as the night went on. Eddie stumbled into him while they fucked around in the arcade, and sat directly next to Richie while they all ate hot-dogs from the concession stand. Richie allowed it, reveled in it, the brush of their shoulders and their hands tangling on the levers of alternating arcade games. He figured that certain things had to cancel out, if he distanced himself from Eddie by keeping his lingering looks to himself and tried not to badger Eddie about his current state of being, allowing Eddie to brush against him still counted as holding up his end of the deal. Or - both ends of the deal, considering he’d made it with himself. 

It seemed Eddie was doing all the looking for Richie anyway, which was weird. Richie would glance to his left in the middle of a conversation with Mike and Eddie would be staring at him. Eyes a little narrowed but not in an angry way, more like he was trying to figure Richie out. Eddie would always look away, too, when Richie happened to glance at him. Clear his throat and stare at his hands. Eddie had a way of tripping Richie up, because just when Richie thinks he’s learned all there is to learn about him Eddie is doing something that makes Richie understand he wasn’t even close. 

He knows this and yet he’s still surprised when Eddie offers to walk him back to Derry High to get his car, and Richie should really stop being surprised at anything when it came to Eddie. Learn to expect the unexpected, or whatever, because Eddie was made up of distraction and confusion. And of course Eddie plays it off, says he’s only coming because he needs a ride home, and realistically that’s all it is anyway, no matter how much Richie wants to pretend it’s something else. 

They walk in tandem like they did when Richie walked him home after the clubhouse, and Richie jars at Eddie’s shoulder like he had then too. Eddie laughs, and it’s quiet, but he shoves Richie’s shoulder with his own. Maybe Eddie wasn’t the only one who followed patterns, maybe they did together, which makes a lot of fucking sense when Richie reflected on other moments of his past, and on the one they shared. Pieces spread across Derry on Richie’s part and contradicting words and facial expressions on Eddie’s, they aren’t anything new. And neither is this - Eddie’s hushed stature and Richie’s deafening one and a shared walk home that didn’t mean anything. They’ve been here before, cyclically and parallely and linearly, no matter which way you cut it. Still filled to the brim with things unsaid and a little too much hope.

They curve around the side street to Main and go the back way, past the Synagogue and onto the dirt road by the train tracks and the Standpipe. Richie is silently grateful the shortcut doesn’t pass by the Kissing Bridge, even if he doesn’t have to be. It’s dark out, the sky like navy blue velvet, and Richie is sure if they passed by his carving he’d avoid even looking at it and Eddie wouldn’t even notice. But Richie also knows that hypotheticals mean actual shit, and that he’s done things the last two months that formed him into someone unrecognizable, so Richie doesn’t risk counting on himself. For all he knows the Richie he is now would stop and at the carving and spill his guts to Eddie just because he could. Maybe that’s a good thing, that’s the braver option anyway - as well as it’s the dumbest - so it’s not like it fucking matters. 

They’re cutting through the neighborhood surrounding Derry High when Richie breaks the silence. 

“It’s nice to have exams over and done with, at least for now, yeah?” 

Eddie nods, “It is, I think I would have actually gone crazy if I had to read about the French revolution again.” 

Richie snorts, and Eddie smiles. It’s small, just a quirk of his lips and a shrug. 

“Everything okay?” Richie asks.

“Hm? Oh, yeah. I’m good.” Eddie says.

Richie furrows his eyebrows. “You sure?”

“Just a lot on my mind, I guess.” 

“You wanna talk about it?” 

Eddie sighs deep, scuffing his shoes on the gravel. Their almost to the parking lot of Derry High now, Richie can see the overhead street lights up ahead. He feels like there's a spell over them, a heavy haze, and he doesn’t know if it’ll break before or after they reach his car and separate again. He doesn’t know if he wants it to. 

Eddie is silent for a moment, weighing something in his head. “I don’t know.” He decides eventually. 

“You don’t know?” Richie questions. 

“I want to talk. About what I’m thinking about, I mean. It’s just - I’m scared.” Eddie murmurs. 

“You don’t have to be, not with me.” Richie says softly. 

Eddie looks up at him, eyebrows raised like he doesn’t really believe Richie, which sort of stings, “You don’t even know what I want to say.” Eddie says calculatedly. 

“Eds, I literally can’t think of anything you could say that would upset me.” Richie says, “I mean, aside from like, repeatedly calling me dumb and ugly. Even then, I’d probably just cry or something embarrassing like that.” 

Eddie huffs a laugh, “Well, there goes my big speech then.” 

Richie feigns offense, flipping him off, “Watch it, I’m an ugly crier.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes, jars Richie to the side with a press of his shoulder, and goes back to scuffling pebbles across the street. Richie stays silent, figuring Eddie will speak up, but he doesn’t. They keep walking until they have to cross the street to the lot, and Richie feels the haze subside, the spell break, but nothing’s changed. And he gets it - understands Eddie’s stand-offishness, but it’s still discouraging. He wants Eddie to talk to him, he wants Eddie to _ want _to tell him things. Richie knows that’s asking for more than he’d expect out of Eddie anyway, but still. 

They reach the car, and the spell keeps breaking. Eddie seems lighter, or like he’s pretending to be, tripping Richie by kicking a foot in front of his shin and cackling when Richie tries to run at him to do the same. Eddie makes cracks as they slide into the car, whines about the smell of it and the stain on the passenger side floor that’s always been there. Richie plays along, keeps the conversation light and badgers Eddie right back, and pretends like he can’t see through it. Richie can, though. He can see the sharpness of Eddie’s smile, the way it gets when it’s just a little bit strained. He can hear it in his tone when he struggles to fill the silence with sentences that hold no gravity. He can feel it when there’s nothing left to say, and Eddie leans his head on the window and pulls at the threads of his jeans when Richie turns the radio up. Richie doesn’t know if it’s because of familiarity - putting up facades to distract yourself more than anyone else - or if it’s because he pays enough attention to Eddie to know the difference between real and fake. One explanation is easier and one is more honest, though Richie isn’t sure which is which. 

Richie drives and Eddie stays quiet and the music keeps playing. It’s soft and slow, sweet guitar and rough pitching voices, lyrics about the passage of time and the loss of memory. Derry is different at night time, at least from the warmth of Richie’s car. Weighed down, almost. Softer around the edges, yellow street lamps spilling into the black. Richie drives slower than he usually would, giving Eddie time in case his house happened to be the cause of his stress, and maybe because he feels like something’s going to give once he pulls into the driveway. Shatter the thin glass that’s keeping a barrier between honesty and easiness, too many thin shards to even bother picking up. Maybe it’s already broken, maybe it broke the night Richie came out and this is the after-effect of the rift. Silences that aren’t comfortable but not tense either. Hovering in the middle of politeness and legitimacy. It isn’t all bad, if anything it’s easier to not talk about the bad stuff. 55 days of jokes and mindless conversations wouldn’t be the end of the world. 

The drive takes about fifteen minutes, ten minutes longer than it usually does, but Eddie doesn’t mention it. When Richie turns onto his street and begins crossing the stretch of houses before they reach Eddie’s, Eddie reaches a hand out and lowers the music slowly until the radio clicks off. Richie eyes him but doesn’t say anything, easing off the gas as he pulls parallel to Eddie’s driveway and puts the car in park. Eddie isn’t looking out the window anymore but he won’t look at Richie either, staring straight ahead and worrying at his bottom lip. Richie is half expecting Eddie to get out of the car without another word, with a soft smile that doesn’t reach his eyes and a little wave. It doesn't happen. Eddie doesn’t move, his lips purse and he nods to himself, inhales so deep and rough Richie sort of wants to fish his inhaler out of his pocket for him. 

“Well..." Richie trails off. He hadn’t really meant to say anything, wanted to allow Eddie to break the silence for once, but Richie finds he’s always the one cracking things open. It’s easier to face stuff like that, easier to approach what scares you if you force it to fruition instead of waiting on it to pounce. 

“Trying to talk myself up in my head, sorry,” Eddie says, smiling bitterly at his hands before looking at Richie. The smile fades into something subtler, softer, as does Eddie’s entire face when they lock eyes. Richie tries not to think about it. 

“Eddie, you don’t have to-” 

“I do, though.” Eddie cuts Richie off, “I _ do_.” He repeats, when Richie goes to protest. “It isn’t even a big deal, or - it isn’t anymore. Now that I _ know _there isn’t any reason to hide it, you know? But it still feels so-” 

“Eds…” Richie says softly, nervously, though he doesn’t know for what. Quickly, he rattles off possibilities in his head and finds anything he can think of that Eddie could tell him isn’t probable anyway, so he gives up.

“Do you remember when you walked me home? After I saw the clubhouse?” Eddie asks.

Richie furrows his eyebrows. “Yeah. Yes, of course I remember.” 

“Okay,” Eddie nods, swallowing thickly, “So you remember what I told you? About my mom, I mean.”

“How she pretended you were like, one step away from dying for half of your life? Yeah, Eds, kind of hard to forget.” Richie says carefully. 

“Right, and you know how I said we moved away from New York because I found out what she’d been doing?” 

“You’re asking a lot of questions, Eddie, are you sure I’m the one who needs help-”

“_Richie._” 

“Yes. Okay? Yes, I remember the whole conversation.” Richie says, and now it’s his turn to struggle swallowing. 

“That’s not why we - that isn’t what actually happened. I found out about all of that like, a year before we came here. That wasn’t why we moved.” Eddie says, or truthfully spits, like he’s forcing the words out of his throat before he can take them back. 

“Okay?” Richie says, narrowing his eyes slightly in confusion. He doesn’t understand the significance. Or, he sort of does. Sort of gets the need for truthfulness, the need to clear the air before - what? They leave? Before the glass shatters even more? He doesn’t know. 

“We left because my friend and I - Well, I guess we were sort of dating at the time, whatever, it doesn’t matter. We used to kiss under the bleachers, sometimes, and some group of assholes caught us and fucking-” Eddie stops short, and his eyes clench shut for a moment like the memory is painful. He opens them, blinks twice, and continues. “They beat us up. Not enough to do any real damage but it was still bad. I was fine, I think I had a black eye or something, honestly I’ve blocked most of it out, but he got the brunt of it. His nose was broken, and-”

“_What_?” Richie croaks. His brain sort of circuits. Cuts off and flips around and starts over again. His mouth goes dry and he can feel his face flushing, half with unbidden anger at anyone even _ touching _ Eddie like that, and half with the last part of Eddie’s sentence. At first it’s like his brain can’t comprehend it and then suddenly it can’t stop repeating it. Him, him, _ him_. 

Eddie doesn’t seem to notice, keeps talking over Richie, “It was really bad. My mom didn’t - react well. To a lot of it, at first. Coming home with my face bruised and then the whole secret boyfriend thing. She was pissed. And embarrassed. So-” Eddie’s voice breaks, and Richie nearly shoots his arm out in alarm with the need to comfort him, but Eddie is crowded up against the side of the door like he’s afraid of getting hit again, so Richie refrains. 

Eddie clears his throat, “So she pulled me out of school, and moved us out here within like, a month. A fresh start, you know? Because she had all these church friends and all of their kids went to school with me, and she didn’t want anybody to know.” Eddie keeps his eyes on his hands, his jaw clenched tight, “It was about protecting me too, of course, from getting my ass beat daily or whatever, but I think. I think it was mainly about not wanting anyone to know that I was gay.” 

Eddie looks up, finally, and his eyes are glassy and his throat is working like he’s trying not to cry, but other than that he looks - _ determined. _His face is set like he’s preparing for an insult, and his hands are clenched in the rough denim of his jeans. 

Richie doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t even have enough power to control his facial expressions, which he’s mastered doing since Eddie came into his life. Richie can feel that his lips are parted but he can’t close them, and his head feels foggy and unclear. He can’t find a way to piece together words to make a coherent sentence. 

Eddie’s face softens slowly, but it’s less sympathy and more weakness, bravery and determination short-lived. Richie knows the feeling. “Please say something.” Eddie murmurs.

Richie makes a noise in the back of his throat, forcing his mouth closed. “Fuck, I don’t - what the fuck.” Richie stumbles. There’s a miniscule quirk to one side of Eddie’s mouth for a second, a hint of a smile, but it doesn’t last. “You’re gay?” 

“I’m gay.” Eddie confirms. 

“Okay,” Richie says, and then flinches, “Shit, sorry, there’s a lot to unpack, um. Your mom - is she, like-”

“She doesn’t have any plans to put me in an all Christian school or convert me, if that’s what you’re asking.” 

Richie relaxes a little, “Okay, that’s good. That’s really good.” 

“She just kind of ignores it? We don’t talk about it, but I’m guessing it’s one of those things where she just wants me to hide it, until I’m eighteen and living on my own.” Eddie says. There’s a hint of poison in his tone, like it pisses him off, but it isn’t too obvious. Richie gets it. There were worse ways parents dealt with queer children.

Richie nods, but doesn’t speak. Richie doesn’t know how to voice his thoughts. There’s a mixture of feelings stirring inside of him, ones he doesn’t know how to process because they contradict each other. There’s something buzzing underneath his skin, rattling his bones and making him lightheaded - almost like the last five minutes didn’t even happen. There’s giddiness and elatedness and fierce longing, and anger. Hot and white behind Richie’s skull. For Eddie’s mom, for the assholes who hurt him, and empathetic anger too, for Eddie himself. They mix all together inside of Richie and make his throat stick and his hands feel sort of shaky, and all he can do is _ look _at Eddie and hope his eyes convey what he’s trying to say. 

Eddie looked back at him, seekingly, like he’s waiting for something. Richie understands, with sudden clarity, why Eddie reacted how he did when Richie had come out. It’s dizzying, to feel understood in a way you never thought you could be. Richie bites back a smile, closes his teeth around his bottom lip, and then it breaks through anyway. It’s okay though, because Eddie smiles back, and that’s dizzying too.

“What are you thinking about?” Eddie asks quietly. 

“A lot of different things,” Richie says,

“Like what?”

“Mainly that you’re really fucking brave, and that I’m proud of you.” Richie says candidly. Eddie flushes - and it’s beautiful, the red on his cheeks, making Eddie blush for once, all of it. It’s hard to see in the dark yet it takes up Richie’s vision. 

“Yeah?” Eddie asks, and Richie’s hit with a wave, that Eddie probably hasn’t ever heard that. Not in this context. Richie’s heart aches so intensely his breath catches.

“Yeah.” Richie confirms, “And I kind of want to beat those dickbags up, so that’s a lot, too. Never had the urge to beat someone's ass.” 

Eddie laughs, and it rings through the air, and stares at him for a second. His eyes move up and down Richie’s face, and settle below his nose. Richie thinks he may be staring at his lips, and that thought is too much to handle so he skips past it. Eddie’s eyes don’t move, and Richie has to suck in a breath when Eddie’s body sways ever so slightly toward him. 

“Anything else?” Eddie murmurs.

Richie closes his eyes for a split second and wills himself to be a better person. A _ smarter _person. “That it’s late, and your mom is waiting for you inside.” 

Eddie’s face contorts, and he blinks thrice quickly like he’s shaking himself out of a daze. He clears his throat, and then nods, “Okay. Yeah, shit, you’re right.” 

“I usually am,” Richie says easily, even though it feels like pins scraping against his throat. 

Eddie looks at him for a split second longer, like he’s trying to will Richie into doing something. He should know better by now, Richie thinks. He should know that Richie isn’t brave enough. 

“Okay,” Eddie breathes, “Goodnight Richie,” 

“Goodnight, Eds.” 

Eddie’s hand raises like he’s going to reach for Richie and then settles back against his leg. He nods, unbuckles his seatbelt and opens the car door. Richie watches him go, trying desperately to read his mind through the back of his head. It’s like Eddie senses it, because as he gets to the front door he turns around and waves. Richie waves back, and as soon as Eddie disappears behind the wood he lets his head fall down onto the steering wheel, breathing shakily. 

“What the _ fuck.” _

\--------------------------

_ Spring, 1993 _

When Richie wakes up on Saturday morning, one week after Eddie came out to him, he can feel that something is going to change. There isn’t any way for him to explain it, he can’t even explain it to himself, but it still exists. His head is groggy, fuzzy, when he opens his eyes, even though he got plenty of sleep. The air in his bedroom feels tight, heavy and thick, and his blood is rushing viciously under his skin. There are goosebumps on his arms but his cheeks are flushed and the back of his neck is sweaty. Richie fists the sheets of his bed and inhales deep as he sits up, going a little lightheaded. 

He looks around his room quizzically - as if trying to place the energy on the space, but he can’t. It’s the same room as always, nothing has changed on the surface. Richie listens for the sounds of his parents downstairs before remembering they were out on a trip for some dental convention for his dad's business, so he’d been left home alone till Monday. Richie glances at the clock on his nightstand - which tells him it’s barely ten in the morning - and decides that he may as well get ready. 

Richie gets out of bed and moves towards the bathroom, looking at himself in the dirty glass. His hair is wild from sleep, but that’s not new. His cheeks are red and there are light bags under his eyes, but that isn’t new either. He sighs, pressing his fingertips into the soft skin of his temples and rubbing there gently, trying to work the jittery feeling out of his body. 

He uses the toilet, washes his hands and brushes his teeth, and steps inside his shower before turning the water on. It’s cold at first but he doesn’t move out of the spray - letting the water transition from cool to warm to hot, turning his skin red. Maybe, Richie thinks, he’s caught a cold. That could explain it, the warmth of his cheeks and the dizziness. But he breathes in through his nose and it’s easy to do, clear and not stuffed up, and he forces a cough and it’s weak and dry, not wet or pounding in his chest, so that’s off the table. 

Richie washes his hair and scrubs his skin nearly raw, blinking the water out of his eyes harshly. He stays in the shower longer than he needs to once the soap is washed down the drain, swaying and inhaling the steam. He stays until the water starts cooling down by its own volition and his fingers start to prune before he shuts it off and steps out. The air is cooler now, easier to breathe in, and he takes big gulps of it like he’s been holding his breath for years. Richie towels off, scrubbing his black curls until they stop dripping on his shoulders and moves back toward the bedroom. 

Richie puts on sweats and a t-shirt, rips them off, puts on jeans and a sweater, rips them off, and then sits on his bed in his boxers with his hand pressed against his mouth. And he gets it, he can tell he’s being fucking weird, wired and nervous and expectant, but he can’t stop. Richie feels like he’s at the peak of something, the calm before the storm. That point where everything either comes to a close or to a beginning, depending on what happens, but it doesn’t make sense. It’s the weekend, he has no plans, and nothing has occurred in the last seven days, aside from Eddie being gay, to make him feel this way. Richie settles for over exaggeration and settles on jeans and a sweatshirt before he walks downstairs to get something to eat. It might be his empty stomach, after all, that’s causing the feeling like he’s living behind his eyes. 

He pours himself a bowl of shitty off-brand cereal and sits at the island, shoving spoonfuls into his mouth. It helps a bit, but not all the way. He still feels out of it and a little like he’s missing something, but at least his hands stop shaking. 

Maybe he’ll call Ben, or Mike. Spend some quality time at the farm or inside Ben’s living room. Maybe he’ll tell Ben about his crush on Eddie, about how he’s focusing on letting go of it. Ben would probably pity him. Or tell him to go for it, saying that it could very well end in kisses and interlocked hands, because he’s a romantic like that. Richie doesn’t want to deal with either of those options. Richie could very well call Eddie, but he’s been kinda-sorta avoiding him since last Friday. 

If you were asking Richie himself if that was his intent, he’d say no. But he knows inside, if he’s being honest with himself, that's exactly what he was doing. Not directly - that’d be impossible to do considering they share a class and a lunch table and five friends, but it was still clear. Their solo library sessions were no longer a problem, so it wasn't like he’d been skipping them or anything. But he didn’t sit next to Eddie at lunch, he didn’t invite him over like he had been for the last three months, and on most of their excursions he stayed next to Stan or Bev. They’d talked, the two of them, of course, but it was a lot less normal and more like it had been before they’d pulled up to Eddie’s house. Light-hearted and brushing over the real issue. Jokes and not awkward but also not _ not _awkward silences when there was nothing left to say, and scuffling feet on pavement or linoleum or make-shift carpets made of sheets. Richie knows Eddie has noticed. Richie is sure the others have as well, based on Stanley’s quirked eyebrows and Bill’s unsure gaze. Eddie’s hurt, put-off look of confusion burned more than Richie would like to admit, though. 

And Richie can understand it, that confusion. If he were Eddie he wouldn’t get it either. Going from tight hugs and long walks home and tangled limbs in a hammock to - to avoidance. To awkward waves and strangled goodbyes thirty minutes earlier than even Eddie had to be home and Richie’s complete absence in the hammock at the clubhouse at all. He averts that strung up second-hand blanket like it’s on fire. To be fair, it sort of feels like it is. Feels like sitting in it would be synonymous for cutting a limb off or something equally as dramatic, but whatever. 

Richie had no explanation for it. Well, he may have, but it was a cluster of explanations that were anything but simple and fell under the category of things that felt less and less valid when spoken aloud. Part of it was that night in the car. Not necessarily the whole Eddie Being Gay thing, though that wasn’t of complete triviality. It was more what happened after - what lingered in that space. The warmth in Eddie’s eyes and on his lips, the soft prodding tone of his voice, the way that - if Richie really replayed every second in slow motion, which he had been - Eddie had been looking at Richie’s mouth, leaning in. It was, for lack of a better term, fucking with Richie. Because either Richie is looking at it through eyes of greed and want, which is likely, or Eddie had been doing exactly that. Both of which were really hard to think about. 

It would have been easier to brush over had Eddie not sort of dropped the bomb on Richie along with those lingering stares. Would have been easier if Richie could continue envisioning Eddie as he had been, five years in the future and snuggled up with some sweet, clean, church-going girl in the middle of nowhere. The thing is: he can’t. Because it wouldn’t be a girl, it would be a boy. Maybe equally as sweet clean and church-going, but still a boy. Which is something Richie hadn’t even allowed himself to picture, a reality that despite his consistent visions of parallels and possibilities he hadn’t even conjured. And once again, it was both good and bad. Because if Eddie _ had _ been thinking about kissing Richie, if Eddie _ had _been leaning in, that boy could very well be him. Not sweet nor clean. Kind, though. Foul-mouthed and exuberant, but still kind. Still cuddled up only in the middle of somewhere. 

These thoughts were good, they were warm and exciting and enough to have Richie wanting to throw it all to hell and do something stupid. Like drive to Eddie’s house and honk his horn and pull Eddie against him, kiss him soft and whisper the truth. But Richie was kidding himself, he doesn't have the balls. Not to do that and not to avoid letting those thoughts turn into something ugly. Not towards Eddie but towards himself. Because to him, Eddie finding someone better, someone more compatible and more attractive and more courageous, probably, was a hell of a lot more likely than Eddie wanting anything to do with Richie. Which hurt, stung a lot more than Eddie’s confused wounded glances had the last week, the thought of Eddie finding someone else. Moreso now because Richie was actually an option in that lineup. 

And he couldn’t blame Eddie for it, he wouldn’t dare, but could you blame Richie? For stepping back, protecting himself? From inevitability, from pity, from his own feelings, maybe all three at once. It’s self-pitying and self-sacrifice, to assume the worst, Richie knows it is. It sure as hell isn’t admirable either, but it is what he knows how to do. So, he pulled back. Eased away so he could deal with it, which wasn’t following his whole ‘let it go and take what you can get’ route, but then again; Eddie being someone achievable hadn’t been in his direction plans. Plus it wasn’t like it was forever, knowing himself he’d get to school on Monday and ruffle Eddie’s hair, take that look off Eddie’s face in favour of savoring his smile for the remaining 48 days he had with him. It wasn’t like he could keep up the rouse for much longer anyway. The rest of his friends had noticed his extraction even if they didn’t know why he was doing it, and telling them he was queer in the first place had been enough honesty to last him a lifetime. 

Either way, Richie puts his bowl in the sink and stares at the house phone before deciding on not calling any of them. He’s too torn open right now. He’d look at Ben's pondering brown eyes or Mike’s reassuring smile and spill his guts anyway. And based on that, he sure as shit can’t call Eddie up. A weekend of solitary won’t kill them, or him. Pretty soon it’ll be a lot more than 48 hours without face-to-face contact. 

Richie paces around the kitchen, sits back on the island and then gets up and paces some more. He does the dishes, fingers wrinkling under hot soapy water, and he wipes the counters down. He moves to the living room and fluffs the pillows, walks upstairs and makes his bed, fucks it up by laying on it and gets up and remakes it again. He puts some music on but his tapes seem to have a vendetta, songs that hit too close to home when he’s trying to _ not _think about things like losing his friends and losing Eddie, so he turns it off. Richie grabs his car keys and walks downstairs, then throws them on the counter and eats some crackers. He grabs the car keys again and goes to open the front door - planning on driving around and getting fresh air before he shuts the front door again and goes back upstairs to brush his teeth for the second time, his tongue feeling tangy with leftover salt. 

Richie goes back to the kitchen and glares at his keys, sits in the living room and turns the television on before he finds himself too distracted to pay attention, but he doesn’t turn it off. The background noise it nice. He fidgets with his hands and then the holes in his jeans and then the cushions of the couch. Richie feels stir-crazy and wound up, and that feeling is back. Like he’s at the beginning or the end of a breakthrough. To be fair, he isn’t sure it ever went away, maybe he had just been to preoccupied. 

Richie zones out at the television, eyes glazing over and head whirling with thoughts he can’t even decipher, and even though the television isn’t up that loud he nearly doesn’t hear the knock on the door. Maybe he didn’t even hear the first one, but when it does break through his daze he jumps, head whipping around. He stares at the brown-red wood, eyebrow quirked, before there’s another knock and he shoots up. He walks to the peep hole and squints, and he even if he didn't have his glasses on he would still know who it is. 

It’s Eddie, because of course it is. Richie would be able to pick him out in a crowd, in the middle of a restaurant, in the middle of Times Square. Through his blurry gaze he can see Eddie’s bright yellow pullover, his mussed brown hair that looks either like he just rolled out of bed or has been tugging at it, his bottom lip once again being worried at with his teeth. Richie leans his head on the door, takes a deep breath, and gets ready to put the mask back on earlier than intended. 

He opens the door one second before Eddie knocks again, his hand raised in a fist as he’s about to make contact. He watches Eddie drop his hand, his eyes widening and his posture relaxing almost. A breathy sigh leaving his lips. 

“Hey, Eds.” 

“Hi Richie,” Eddie says, a ghost of a smile on his lips that fades quick. It doesn’t turn into a frown, which is good. It does, however, turn into what Richie has come to understand as Eddie’s worried face. Or maybe his contemplative one. Lips pursed and quirked to the side and his eyebrows scrunched.

Richie leans against the doorway, fingers pattering anxiously against the border. He doesn’t say anything although he knows it’s his turn to. He knows he should invite Eddie in or ask him what he’s doing there or something, but the words feel trapped inside of his throat. Both by the greed to see Eddie and by the greed to send him away, allow himself to wallow a little bit longer. 

Eddie gazes at him expectantly, the wash-over relief moving into something a little more confused. It looks like he’s shrinking into himself, a bit. The forced bravery of his squared shoulders becoming more honest with every passing second Richie doesn’t do what he’s expecting him too. Richie can understand that. Richie lives his life like that. 

It doesn’t mean he likes to watch it overtake Eddie though, so he blows air through his lips and says, “So…” Which doesn’t appear to be the right thing to say, because Eddie’s stare turns a little incredulous. 

“Can I come in, or?” Eddie asks. 

Richie clears his throat and nods quickly, “Yeah. Um. Yeah, shit, sorry,” He stutters, cringing inwardly at himself and moving out of the way, walking backwards into the entry and holding the door open. 

“Thanks,” Is how Eddie responds, short and quiet, ducking inside. 

Richie makes a sort of affirming noise in the back of his throat, shutting the door without bothering to lock it, in case Eddie needed to make a quick, dramatic getaway. Or in case Richie had to, you never know. He isn’t sure what situation could gauge that sort of reaction but he prepares for it anyway. Because they’re on the peak of something ugly or something new. Because Richie knows that predicting anything when it comes to Eddie is done in vain. 

Eddie is standing in the middle of the entryway awkwardly when Richie turns around, hands clasped in front of himself. It would look calm if the tops of Eddie’s knuckles weren’t white from how tight they were clenched around each other. Wouldn’t feel so weird if Eddie didn’t usually stalk towards Richie’s fridge or up the stairs to his bedroom without waiting for confirmation every other time he’d made his way into Richie’s home. If anything, it’s nice to have the acknowledgment that something is off. The rest of it sort of fucking sucks, though. 

Richie debates his next move. As much as the anticipation is driving a drill through his heart he also doesn’t want to scare Eddie off by demanding what he was doing standing on his front porch, so Richie looks around for another topic discussion. Eddie beats him to the punch. 

“No parents?” He asks, glancing around the arch that leads into the living room where the television is still playing. 

“Nah,” Richie shrugs, “Dad’s got some fancy dentist bullshit thing this weekend, so. Just me.” 

Eddie nods, “Cool,” He says softly, and his face doesn’t look hurt but his voice sounds weak and rough around the edges. It makes Richie’s heart sink. 

“Not really,” Richie says, trying to crack a grin. Eddie watches him, mouth matching in a smile around a shaky-ish exhale. Okay. Richie can do this. Fake it till ya’ make it. “Anyway, wanna chill in the living room? We’ve got the movie channels on cable. There’s probably something good on.” 

Eddie’s mouth opens, like he’s going to protest, and Richie braces himself. It doesn’t come though, Eddie’s lips clamping and his adam's apple bobbing with a rough swallow before he nods. “Yeah, that sounds good. About time I got to check out this part of your house, anyway.”

Richie leads the way, not that there’s much room to cross, into the living room. It’s not big but it isn’t small, a medium sized couch and two chairs, a coffee table and a nice enough television set. Eddie’s seen it before, of course, on his first tour of Richie’s house and the handful of other times in between coming and going and greeting Richie’s parents. They haven’t gotten around to just sitting and watching TV, though. Either because Richie’s mom and dad frequent the space or because they wrapped themselves so far in conversation huddled in his bedroom that they didn’t have time. Richie feels both like it’ll be the first and last time and also like this is synonymous for something else, too. Like tangling themselves into depthful conversations was something of the past. Neither of those sound like something Richie wants. 

Richie plops down onto the couch and Eddie follows suit, and that’s different too. The gap between them, settling at opposite ends, their limbs tucked inwards. It wasn’t like they fell all over each other all the time, but personal space was never something they’d been wary of before. Shoulder to shoulder in arcades and movie theaters and on the roofs of cars. Whatever. Richie should get used to the distance, anyway. 

Richie shuffles through channels distractedly, with little to no input from Eddie aside from when it lands on something he absolutely _ will not _ watch, and the familiar pitch of his voice when he groans, “We are _ not _ watching fucking _ Rudy_, Richie, Jesus.” is comforting. Eventually Eddie laments and they settle on Sleepless in Seattle, which Richie had seen way too many times over the course of his friendship with Ben but Eddie hadn’t ever, so it works. Richie lets the remote slip out of his hand and he tucks his feet onto the couch, arms bracketing his knees as he stares at the screen. 

Richie zones in and out, because rewatching movies was never his forte when it came to capturing his already sparing attention, but at some points he becomes hyper-aware of Eddie a foot or two over from him and goes high alert. Eddie’s breath taking up the space in his ears and the side-profile of his face in Richie’s peripheral. The slant of his nose, the curve of his lips, the tangle of his hair that he’d surprisingly not worked through yet. The silence is the most jarring thing. Because even at the Aladdin, squished between five other bodies in the dark of the theater where talking was prohibited, they were never silent. Richie leaning over to whisper mocking comments about the film or repeat shitty impressions of lines so only Eddie could hear him. Eddie’s stifled laughter in the crook of his shoulder. There’s none of that now. Richie can’t find it in him to work words out of his throat when he knows they won’t matter, and Eddie isn’t looking at him. 

The movie plays and Richie gives in, rests his head on the arm around the underside of his thigh to look at Eddie. He tries to be discreet, and Eddie either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Richie takes him in, the contrast of his tan skin against the mustard of his sweatshirt, the starchy blue of his jeans. He moves his glance up to Eddie’s face, and is sort of surprised to see Eddie’s gaze trained somewhere in the general vicinity of the television set but unfocused all the same, like he can’t pay attention either. That’s reassuring, somehow. That this was getting to Eddie just as much as it was to Richie, that Eddie too can feel the way they’ve suspended themselves in unfamiliar territory. Richie hopes Eddie can be braver than him, be the one to bring it up. He also sort of hopes that Eddie won’t. That they can leave themselves hovering just a little longer, prolong the inevitable acknowledgment of change. No matter how much it hurts to watch Eddie pander around in confusion, it couldn’t hurt worse than losing him before he had to. 

Regardless of anything, Eddie still makes his eyes ache when Richie looks at him, almost like staring into the sun. Spotted and colorful and enough to make the corners of Richie’s eyes behind his glasses tear up a bit. Richie clenches them closed, sighs as quietly as he can into his elbow, and moves his head to face forward before he opens them again - because if Eddie was the sun Richie’s eyes were the entire solar system, and they’d consistently orbit around him unless forced to do otherwise. Richie can swear he hears Eddie exhale once he’s no longer looking at him, and he has to clench his eyes shut again for a different reason. So he isn’t as discreet as he’d like to believe. Richie can’t say he’s surprised.

Eventually the movie cuts to its first commercial break, and he hears Eddie turn to face him on the couch. Richie swivels as well, legs crossed in front of him and back against the arm rest, mirroring Eddie. 

“Hey, you want a drink or-”

“What’s going on?” Eddie asks, and Richie sucks in a breath, taken-aback although he doesn’t really have the right to be. He’d been expecting this. 

“What do you mean, man?” Richie questions back, “You showed up here.” It isn’t fair of him, he knows it isn’t. He knows what Eddie means. But Eddie’s got that wounded look on, like he doesn’t understand _ why _Richie’s acting different, like it cuts him deep that Richie would dare to do so, and Richie deflects because it’s what he knows how to do. Richie avoids talking about what’s necessary because it’s what he knows how to do. 

Eddie sputters, briefly, but he’s clearly got some direction in how he wants this conversation to go so it doesn’t last long. That’s good. One of them should be able to plan right. “That’s not - _ fuck you, _you know that’s not what I meant.” His tone is biting but Richie doesn’t flinch. The anger doesn’t feel directed at him, not all the way. 

“Eds-” Richie starts.

“_Don’t _call me that,” Eddie says, and Richie would give him shit about interrupting if Eddie’s voice sounded confrontational. It doesn’t, it sounds pleading. The tone matches his eyes. “You can’t pull that shit. Not right now.” 

Richie hadn’t been aware there had been shit to pull, but he raises his hands in surrender, his face softening. “Eddie,” Richie says carefully, a conformation, and Eddie nods ever so slightly. “I don’t - fuck. I don’t know.” And he doesn’t. Or he doesn’t know how to say it, explain it, without being honest. 

“That’s bullshit.” Eddie says unabashedly. Richie raises his eyebrows. “That’s - no, don’t look at me like that! You know that’s bullshit.” 

“What do you _ mean_?” 

“_You_ are the one who's been acting all fucking skittish and weird the last week, not me.” 

“I have not been _ skittish_-” Richie protests. 

It’s like Eddie doesn’t hear him, “Everything was fine when you dropped me off last Saturday, and then you showed up on Monday and you waved me off, and you stopped sitting next to me at lunch,” Eddie begins counting fingers as he speaks, “And you kept leaving early every time we went out, and no one has that many doctors appointments, asshole, _ I _ would know, and you won’t-” He stops himself, counted fingers dropping to fist one hand on the cap of his knee, and he inhales deep. Eddie’s voice is softer when he speaks again, filled with more confusion. “You won’t talk to me. Not like we used to. You talk to me if it’s a conversation with one of the others but it’s - it isn’t - we’ve barely talked, just you and me, and when we do it’s about _ nothing. _School or cars or fucking cafeteria lunch options.” 

Richie flushes with embarrassment and he breaks eye-contact to stare at the wall behind Eddie hard. Because Eddie’s right, and even though Richie knew that Eddie knew something was off he hadn’t been prepared for his actions to be displayed. For anyone to care enough to find out _ why. _ Richie’s jaw clenches and he chews on the inside of his cheek, trying to find something, _ anything _to say. Something that isn’t a confession. Something that won’t shove them off that peak and into the end as opposed to a beginning. 

“Did I do something?” Eddie asks, tone still soft and a little sad, and Richie’s eyes snap back to his immediately. 

Richie wants desperately to reach for him, entangle their hands, pull Eddie against his chest. Richie was good at physical comfort when his words failed him. But Richie’s also sure that’s just as much of a confession, consoling Eddie with touch, so he doesn’t. 

“No.” Richie says, and repeats it when Eddie looks like he doesn’t believe him, “_No_, Eddie, you didn’t do anything. It’s me.” Richie says, slowly, carefully. “I just - I’m dealing with something, alright? And I’m trying to get over it, I am, but it’s hard. It’s not your fault, though.” And that’s honest enough, right? That’s the border of the truth, the summary of it. 

“Then what the fuck?” Eddie mumbles defeatedly, hands splaying open to emphasize it before dropping back onto his thighs, his shoulders slumping. 

Richie opens his mouth, a rough, wounded noise escaping his throat as he tries to gather the words. There aren’t any. “Eddie,” is what comes out, softly, like he’s the one pleading now. 

“It’s just-” Eddie sighs, frustrated, glaring down at his hands, “I told you that I was gay, and you - we - in the car. There was a second where I thought that maybe - but then you told me to go, and then you’re acting distant, and I don’t. I didn’t mean to like, make you uncomfortable, I guess.” 

Richie doesn’t get it, at first, his eyes widening, “_Eddie._” He says, almost laughing. Not really because it’s funny but mainly because it’s stupid yet endearing, that Eddie would even think like that. “You being gay doesn’t make me uncomfortable, what the hell?” Eddie’s eyes move slowly upwards, meeting Richie’s again. “I’m literally gay, dude. I promise that’s not why I’m - why I was being weird.” Not really, anyway, Richie thinks to himself. Not for the reasons you’re thinking. 

Eddie’s puzzled expression isn’t one Richie understands at all, and he’s sure once he registers it his own face is a pretty good copy of it. 

“I’m not talking about the coming out part, Rich.” Eddie says softly, and Richie’s head spins. The rugs’ been pulled out from under his feet, he’s out of the loop, he’s a million other expressions having to do with being completely off-base. Richie’s brain fills with fog, there isn’t a single thought to process yet he _ gets _it. Of course he does. He’d only been replaying that three to five minute interval in his head for a fucking week straight. 

Soft voices, admissions, Eddie’s warm smile and his flickering eyes. Eddie’s body tipping towards his. Richie had imagined all of it. Richie had imagined none of it. A lull in space and time, an almost-kiss, and like everything else, he’d convinced himself he was hoping for too much. 

“_What_?” Escapes Richie’s mouth before he can stop it, but he needs to know. Because if those five minutes had been exactly what he’d wanted them to be, that meant a lot of other things were too. Which meant Richie had wasted so much fucking time. 

Eddie is staring at him, blushing, “Don’t make me say it,” he whispers, shamefully.

Richie folds himself forward, so he’s kneeling in as opposed to sitting, inched ever so closely to Eddie. Eddie’s eyes widen in confusion. Richie’s fingers flex and curl on his jeans, trying to keep his hands from cupping Eddie’s jaw or running through his hair or both, maybe. Fuck. What the _ fuck_.

“Eddie,” Richie says quietly, and he can feel how wide his eyes are, he can feel his eyebrows raised high. His pulse throbs aggressively, everywhere. In his chest, in his fingertips and cheeks. “Eds, you gotta - I can’t. You gotta say it.” Richie says, desperately trying to search Eddie’s eyes and pick apart his brain. Richie can’t assume, not after everything. He can’t put himself in a place he’d never envisioned he’d be. Because if Richie leans in, and Eddie leans away, it’s over. There’s no take backs. Eddie will know what Richie has tried so desperately to keep inside, and just like his invitation for a cramped apartment with Richie and Eddie and everyone else or maybe just Richie and Eddie, it’ll be gently placed back into his hands, and he can’t take that risk. He can’t offer another piece of himself up if there’s nothing to fill the void it leaves behind, Richie is already so close to being hollowed out. 

Eddie is looking up at him, drinking him in, and for once Richie hopes everything he feels is visible in his eyes. Eddie nods suddenly, maybe in understanding, and Richie sees Eddie’s own hands fidgeting out of the corner of his eye. Eddie’s left hand clasped around his own knee, white-knuckled, and his right hovering just an inch above like he’s desperate to reach for Richie too. It takes everything in Richie to not tug his hand up himself. 

“In the car,” Eddie starts slowly, “Were you thinking about kissing me?” 

Richie’s breath hitches, and he clamps his eyes closed, forcing himself to nod. Richie doesn’t trust his voice right now. He feels like if he speaks, the spell will break. This will fold into something it isn't - a day dream with a romcom in the back and Eddie still so far away. Richie hears Eddie’s breath stutter, and he keeps his eyes squeezed shut, enough so to see greenish-pink spots dance in front of them where everything is cast in red. Eddie moves, Richie can feel the dip in the couch as he does, and then a lot of things happen at once. 

First, he feels the warmth of Eddie’s body near his, which is a good sign. Which means Eddie didn’t get up and walk out. Then, the juniper-pine scent fills his nose, just as overwhelming as it had been on Richie’s birthday, a month ago, an hour ago, a lifetime ago. Because Eddie does not operate within the functions of time, because Eddie fills up every crack and crevice in Richie’s room and in his head with bright smiles and loud laughter or enveloping silence and facial expressions Richie can’t understand, until everything was unrecognizable.

Richie opens his eyes when he feels a palm against his cheek, warm and sort of sweaty, which should be gross but it _ isn’t_, if anything Richie wants to lean into it, never wants the palm to move. Eddie is directly in front of him, kneeling too, so their nearly eye level despite the three inches Richie has on him. It isn’t as close as they’ve ever been and yet Richie feels suffocated in it, encompassed in it. Eddie’s eyes are still big, still brown, still framed by unnaturally long eyelashes, and Richie has to inhale. It’s shaky, disbelieving, because Richie still isn’t sure that this isn’t a joke or some hyper-realistic zone out he can't snap out of. The constellation of freckles that spatter Eddie’s cheeks are clearer than ever, and Richie thinks this could be enough. Just kneeling this close to Eddie, counting the dots that deckle his face, it’s more than he’d ever let himself imagine. 

The thing is, the thing _ is _ that Eddie looks equally as in awe. His eyes are big and shining, moving like he’s relearning Richie’s face, and the thumb on the hand that rests on Richie’s cheek is moving up and down. Not coercively, not because Eddie thinks he should, but more like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. Like he’s studying the patterns of Richie’s skin. The soft curve up of Eddie’s lips is not new, it’s the same smile it’s always been, but Richie understands that it’s _ his _smile now. That Eddie doesn’t smile like that for just anybody, that it looks a hell of a lot sweeter up close. 

“Hey,” Eddie says softly, and Richie snaps his eyes up from where they’d been trained on the bow of Eddie’s upper lip. 

“Hey,” Richie croaks, and Eddie giggles, his teeth catching at his bottom lip. It’s the best sound in the world. 

Eddie reaches up with his other hand and removes Richie’s glasses slowly, tenderly, the space behind Eddie blurring more than it already had been. Richie almost wants to protest, wants to snatch them back and claim that he needs to see everything, but Eddie’s fingertips are soft and careful not to rub against the lenses and the edges of his face soften, like he’s behind a shadowy pane of glass, so Richie doesn’t say anything. He does, however, raise his hands up from where they’d been stagnant by his sides - he’d forgotten he’d had them, honestly - to curl around the nape of Eddie’s neck and card through his soft brown hair. 

The pads of his fingers rub at the back of Eddie’s neck, the skin there warm and flushed. Eddie hums softly and closes his eyes. Richie feels - torn open. Mostly. In the best ways. He doesn’t want to ever close his eyes, wants to learn every curve of Eddie’s face and suspend them here, maybe. Stop the seconds from ticking and the sun from setting and rising again and just stay where he is. Maybe Eddie is the secret to controlling time. 

“In the car,” Richie nearly whispers, an echo of Eddie not a minute earlier. Eddie’s eyes flutter open and he stares at Richie intently. “Were you thinking about kissing me?” 

Eddie looks at him for a moment, with so much warmth and adoration Richie feels like he may explode, brings his other hand to cup Richie’s other cheek, and says, “Yeah. Yeah, I was.” 

And then Eddie kisses him, and time does stop. It has to, it’s the only explanation for the way Richie’s heart stutters and ceases to beat at all, and the air around him seems to solidify to where he can feel every molecule on his arms, and the room goes devoid of any noise. 

And then Richie presses in, and Eddie’s head turns so their lips slide together a little better, and it all comes rushing back. His heart throbs everywhere as it had been and he can feel the overhead fan against his cheeks and the television continues playing Sleepless in Seattle. 

This kiss doesn’t last forever, but it also feels like it never stops. Eddie’s lips are soft, opposite to Richie’s which are definitely chapped, and it’s more than Richie thinks a kiss should be. His every nerve feels lit up, and his lips are tingling and his hands shake on Eddie’s cheek and on the back of his head, and Richie can feel the tremble in Eddie’s where they reside on his face. Their lips slide together a few times before Eddie pulls back a little, a quick intake of breath. Richie won’t admit it if Eddie asks, but a noise pushes its way out of the back of his throat as he shoots forward to peck Eddie’s lips once, twice more, before he pulls back too. 

Pulling back may be an exaggeration, their foreheads are pressed together and Richie’s hands are still entangled on Eddie, but their lips aren't touching. Richie breathes heavily, opening his eyes to see that Eddie’s are still closed, a smile playing on his mouth even as it’s parted, gathering air. 

“What the fuck.” Richie mumbles, and Eddie laughs helplessly, his head tipping forward to fall on Richie’s shoulder and his arms wrapping around Richie’s back. Richie eases down, mainly because his legs are shaking too much to hold him up, and he lays against the armrest vertically, Eddie curled around him. 

Eddie raises his head to look up at Richie once they’re settled, arms uncurling to cross on his chest so he can rest his chin on them, and he’s the most beautiful thing Richie has ever seen. 

“So,” Eddie says, “I think I have a little bit of a crush on you.” 

“Yeah,” Richie nods, disbelieving, “Join the fucking club.” 

\--------------------------

_Summer, 1993_

Richie Tozier is 18 years old when he realizes he is both everything and nothing like his six best friends. He’s come to understand, over time, that opposites exist simultaneously. Nothing can ever be described by one thing, nothing is ever easy, and everything is worth it. 

He feels this especially, as he sits in the sticky plastic chair on the Derry High School football field doused in heat that bleeds too easily through his deep purple graduation gown. There’s sweat pooling on his shoulder and underneath his ass, probably, and he’s surrounded by both the worst and the best people he’s ever met. And he’s cheering, so loudly his voice peaks and cracks like he’s fourteen, arms waving wildly in the air as Eddie Kaspbrak collects his diploma. Eddie spots him from the stage, smile shining so bright it outshines the sun in his eyes, and blows him a kiss. 

Richie is second to last in terms of the only people he cares about cheering for, and once his name is called he saunters up to the stage smiling so hard his jaw aches. He shakes hands with teachers who both loved and hated him, he fist bumps Mr. Watson, who unknowingly set Richie up with the love of his life, and turns around to the front to take a bow. He knows realistically he can’t hear every single one of the Losers individual cheers, but he can feel them thrum in his chest. Richie stands up, places his diploma between his teeth and pulls both his middle fingers up, one last farewell. To highschool, to fucking Derry, Maine, to everyone who ever doubted him and his best friends. Mike Hanlon included, who is currently seated in the back next to Richie’s parents, because although he hadn’t attended their school it was still these people who terrorized him. 

A lot of students cheer, they all clap, even as the vice principal makes an offended noise behind him, and Richie lets them all pretend they’re in on the joke. Let’s them fake like they spent the last four years laughing with him instead of at him, because the bravest thing to do is be better than the people never tried to understand you. 

If Stanley wasn’t the one to close the literal ceremony, Richie knows the seven of them would have left before it ended. That’s not the case, but it’s a perfect excuse to sneak the six of them around to stand behind the last row of students, dragging Mike up next to them, to wait to toss their hats. Stan shakes hands and smiles bigger than Richie’s ever seen, and once he meets them and joins the line, the seven of them link hands. Eddie’s hand is interlocked with his right and Bev’s with his left, and Richie feels like the wholest version of himself. All of his pieces are there, sans the library and the kissing bridge, but there are no voids. He is 11 and he is 15 and he is 18 all at once, and he’s on his way to leaving the town that couldn’t ever contain him. Couldn’t contain _any_ version of him. 

They toss their hats when they’re announced Class of 1993, and Richie pulls Eddie to wrap his arms around his shoulders and kiss him, because he can. Because school bullies don’t exist anymore, because he’s leaving Derry in the dust, because he wants to. And Richie feels brave, as his sun-warmed lips meet Eddie’s and he feels him smile against his mouth. He feels brave as Mike whoops and Bill wraps both of his arms around them when they pull apart. Because Richie _ is _ brave, with them and probably without them, too, but he’s lucky enough to never have to find out. 

They take pictures, all squished together and sectioned off, kissing parents and shaking hands and tripping over too-long second-hand graduation gowns. Then they section off again, each to their respective cars aside from Richie and Eddie, who share Richie’s and Ben and Beverly, who share Bev’s, with a promise to meet at the Quarry. 

Richie drives and Eddie fiddles with the radio, and at every stop sign Richie takes Eddie’s hand and kisses it, and every time Eddie flushes, scoffs, and squeezes Richie’s thigh. The music is brighter now, Richie’s California tapes. Lyrics no longer gripped in past-tense but in hope instead, because if Derry was synonymous for loss the West Coast was synonymous for gain. 

At the Quarry, they strip down into their underwear just like they used to, and clutch hands again as they canon-ball into the green-blue water below. It’s the same as it always is, their games haven’t changed. Richie gathers Eddie atop his shoulders as Mike does the same with Stan, before they crash into one another, wet skin against west skin. Eddie wins, because of course he does, and he bellows loudly while pumping his fist, and Richie wants to watch him forever. 

Eventually they grow tired, and they lie on their backs and float, soaking in the sun. Eddie drags Richie out eventually, snapping about sunscreen and melanoma, tugging him up to the bank to lather him in SPF700 or something equally as intense. Richie sits with his back to Eddie, Eddie’s legs wrapping around his waist and his hands rubbing lotion into his skin. Eddie’s hands are warm always, and the mixture of the cool sunscreen makes Richie shiver. Eddie gets his back and his arms before pressing a kiss into Richie’s slick shoulder, bitching about the taste of sunscreen even though he'd done it by his own volition. 

Richie lays his head back against Eddie, chin titled up, and the warmth of Eddie’s gaze when he glances down is enough to put summer out of business. Richie tells him so, too, and Eddie rolls his eyes. It’s in vain, as always, because his cheeks go red and he kisses Richie on the mouth, sweet and slow. 

“Love you,” Richie murmurs when Eddie pulls away, and Eddie’s eyes shine, as they always do, whenever Richie says it.

“I love you too,” Eddie says back, nosing at Richie’s cheek. 

Tomorrow is their last day in Derry, Maine. He and Eddie will gather into Richie’s car and drive to California so Eddie can attend UCLA and Richie can start his internship at KWKYT Radio come August, and Richie doesn’t even try to plan any further than that. He knows by now his ability to predict the future is weak at best. Leave that to the Long Island Medium, Richie is keen on taking what he can get. 

The rest of them will follow soon enough. Bev and Ben are going to San Francisco, Ben for architecture and Beverly for fashion. Mike wants to open a charity and thinks Reno is a good place to start, and Stan plans to do accounting for him, and Bill - Bill is going to Los Angeles too, only in October. He’s working on a novel, says it should be wrapped by then, says it’s about Derry. Richie had joked with him, told him to write about the seven of them. But Bill had gone shiny-eyed and a little red-faced, and said he already was. 

It’s certainly not a bike rides' distance anymore, between them, but it isn’t enough space to break the string that holds them together, it's just enough to tether them. Richie will miss them like he’d miss a limb, but it isn’t forever. He’s glad they’re all getting out, learning to breathe underwater is a good skill to have but not one you're meant to maintain. 

Tomorrow, he’ll gather his and Eddie’s belongings into the back of his car, filling up the trunk and the backseat, and they’ll cross the state line and never look back. Richie knows Derry won’t crumble in their absence, knows Derry is like a cockroach and will outlive the Rapture, probably, but he’d like to think they made their mark. There is a clubhouse in the Barrens with their names carved into the wood and a hammock that will stay empty. There’s a theater and an arcade and a library and an outhouse, and some belong to all of them and some belong to Richie alone, just as they each have their own burdens sprinkled over the town. Derry will not collapse when they leave but it will not forget them either, and that’s better anyway. Evidence of life as opposed to destruction. A carving on a bridge as proof of existence.

Richie will take Eddie there before they go, too. Show Eddie the carving, and get called a sap for it, probably, but Richie knows Eddie. Knows he’ll wait till he thinks Richie isn’t looking and trail his fingers over the lettering, something meaningful beneath his fingertips. Then, he’ll crush the bridge underneath his tires one last time, gathering what he needs from it in the grooves and leaving what he doesn’t, and then he’ll be gone. There’s a book of postcards underneath his drivers seat, _ Send me one for every place you go_, and at every state line they’ll sign their names and play a game of Russian Roulette with the others. Ben may get New York and Mike may get Kentucky, but Richie will get Eddie, and that’s all he could ever ask for anyway. 

That’s tomorrow, though. And this is today. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dont think i even have words for this fic. it means the entire world to me, honestly. i have never spent this long on a fic, i have never written anything with this many words, and i have never written more than one chapter. all in all: a lot of firsts!! i started this in august because i felt like writing - and it started out with a prompt i didnt even use!!! since then it's become something i both hate and love, but now that it's finished i think i'll cherish it forever. this is the first time i have ever felt proud of my own writing. okay, anyway, enough about me. if you read this, if you waited for a chapter, if you left kudos or commented, thank you. it means EVERYTHING to me that people would give something like this the time of day. thank you endlessly. feel free but not inclined to leave kudos or comments, though i'd love to hear what you thought! okay i think that's all i have to say. this took an endless amount of time and energy so if you see me on here anytime soon expect short and mf sweet and easy. i need a year off after this. thank you again for reading. you can find me on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/ridtheblues) as im there 90% of my time. . come be my friend


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